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THE RETURN OF 
FRANK CLAMART 


BOOKS BY HENRY C. ROWLAND 

THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

HIRONDELLE 

DUDS 

MILE HIGH 

NEW YORK : HARPER & BROTHERS 




THE RETURN OF 
FRANK CLAMART 


By 

HENRY C. ROWLAND 

Author of 

"Hirondelle,” “Duds,” “Mile High,” Etc. 


j 



> > 
> } ) 


l 


HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

u 





THE RETURN OF 
FRANK CLAMART 


Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U.S.A. 


First Edition 

D-X 


< i 

< « 1 


MAY 19 ’23 


©C1A705502 








THE RETURN OF 
FRANK CLAMART 






THE RETURN OF 
FRANK CLAMART 

CHAPTER I 

B IRDS,” said Shane Emmet, and went on in a 
1 discursive voice, “The silly superiority of the 
human race . . . with birds flying constantly over 
its head, and fishes unseen and unguessed at swim¬ 
ming around out there.” He waved his arm at the 
ocean. 

The girl beside him laughed. “And the millions 
of varieties of undiscovered microbes,” she said. 

“Well, even that,” he admitted. “Four years ago 
a devastating army of them launched a world war 
against mankind and killed more people in six 
months than any war among ourselves has ever done 
in six years. Nobody will ever know the mortal 
statistics of the ‘flu.’ What if these micro-organisms 
had been a little stronger and got us all. How 
humiliating, from our point of view, to think of the 
old earth plugging right along without any humans 
on it. But that might have happened if the ‘flu’ bugs 
had been, let us say, twice as virulent. And if it had 
happened, it wouldn’t have stopped anything but our 
affairs.” 

“The point is,” said the girl, “it never has, and so 
we can pretty safely say it never will.” 

“Something else might, though. Poison gas from 
a comet, or our oxygen sucked away for several 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


hours or combined with too much nitrogen and car¬ 
bon, or a sudden tilting out of axial balance.” 

“You don’t need to go that far to look for trouble, 
Shane. And with all of our superiority we don’t 
pretend to run this planet.” 

“We’d better not We can’t even run ourselves 
halfway efficiently. Nothing like as well as those 
gulls manage their part of it. Dead people are lit¬ 
tering up the place the whole time, but in all of my 
walks along the shore and cruisings on the water 
I’ve never come on but one or two dead gulls of the 
thousands that I’ve seen, and then the chances are 
that some fool had shot them. They are all beautiful 
and strong and full of life and vigor. I doubt if any¬ 
body ever saw one drop dead in full flight, or any 
other unmolested bird or animal, for that matter. 
But we humans are doing that thing all the time. 
It’s a growing habit.” 

“A lot of the reason for it is a growing habit,” 
said the girl. “If you were to scatter a truckload of 
poisoned fish along this beach you’d be apt to see 
some gulls dropping dead in full flight, or getting 
mixed up and trying to fly into the surf or 
something.” 

Shane Emmet nodded. “Last night I saw a beau¬ 
tiful girl flop down while dancing. She seemed to be 
going strong, when, bang! . . . speaking of guns. 
The house physician told me this morning that they 
had pulled her through. He didn’t say through 
what . For a while it was touch and go.” 

It was late winter or early spring on that New 
Jersey beach. The weather had turned suddenly 
very mild. From Cape May Point they had walked 
far up the unfrequented stretch on the bay side and 

2 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


had now paused to rest, sitting with their backs 
against a dune. Just there the only close sign of 
habitation was a little building that might have been 
a summer fishing camp, now shuttered up and with a 
shabby, weatherbeaten look. Behind it a portable 
garage of corrugated iron, and piebald. 

“Most of the people near her grinned/’ said 
Shane. “That rotten knowing sort of grin. Some 
of the women laughed. Why couldn’t they assume 
that she had fainted from purely natural causes? 
Curious, devilish sense of humor. And even curi- 
ouser their idea of having a good time. Why don’t 
more people like our sort of healthy, harmless way 
of enjoying ourselves? Coming here to sketch . . . 
and keeping out of trouble?” 

“And yet,” said the girl, “if my friends and fam¬ 
ily were to know that I had motored from my studio 
in Greenwich Village first to Atlantic City, then 
here to Cape May Point with Shane Emmet, the 
cartoonist, they would be convinced that I was on 
the toboggan run to perdition.” 

“I suppose so. The fact that you put up at one 
hotel and I at another wouldn’t help much. Nor 
that I am now resting my trunk at Cape May and 
you back there at the Point. Who would believe 
that we were merely good pals? Darn it, I wish I 
didn’t have to believe it myself.” 

The girl ignored this remark. “We’d better start 
sketching while this atmosphere holds. It’s quite 
perfect. And those clouds.” She set up her folding 
easel and took a panel from the color box. Shane 
did the same in a sort of abstracted way. 

“People are hopelessly rotten, nowadays,” he 
complained. 


3 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“No more than ever,” she retorted. “There would 
actually be less fuss now than there would have been 
twenty years ago. But I wouldn’t have been let live 
with a companion in a studio apartment then.” 

“You oughtn’t to, now.” Shane grumbled, and 
began to mix his colors. “I don’t know why I’m 
doing this, anyhow. It’s against all my ideas and 
sense of the fitness of things.” 

She saw fit to misunderstand his growling. “That’s 
because you sold your artistic birthright for a mess 
of newspaper pottage. Still, I don’t think you are 
to blame. You paint portraits better than ’most 
anybody, but you do cartoons and character sketches 
better than anybody, and it’s worth a lot to be at 
the top in anything. And”—she went on quickly at 
sight of his gathering frown—“if you feel this way 
about my riding from place to place with you in your 
car and painting with you for the sake of your com¬ 
pany and protection and technical help, then we’ll go 
our different, independent ways.” 

“If you like to be with me enough for that,” 
Shane snapped, “then why can’t you like me well 
enough to marry me ?” 

She smiled. “Because then I’d have to listen to 
your scolding all of the time instead of only a part 
of it. You like to be Bohemian yourself, but you 
would loathe having your wife be that, too. You’d 
never forget that you had married Cynthia Cabot, 
the daughter of Judge Pendleton Cabot of Boston, 
and that somebody might be in danger of forgetting 
that fact. Like most American painters who have 
lived and studied in France for a good many years, 
you are a bit of a snob at heart . . . not for your¬ 
self, goodness knows. But you would be, for me. 

4 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

You would put me right smack back at what I 
finally managed to get away from.” 

“Oh, well-” Shane began, helplessly, when 

Cynthia interrupted: 

“What sort of bird is that . . . there . . . 
fluttering out of the water?” She half rose, point¬ 
ing with her maulstick at the long, burnished swell 
just beyond where it began to mount sluggishly, 
trip, curl, and break. “Twice it’s fluttered down 
that way, Shane. IVe been watching it. Look 
. . . it can’t seem to rise . . . there, now it’s up 
again. It’s hurt, or exhausted ... or a dying 
bird, such as you say is never seen.” 

“A pigeon,” Shane said. “A carrier pigeon. All 
in from a long flight, I should say. Poor little chap. 
. . . Ah, there he goes into the surf.” * 

Cynthia sprang up, gripped with that curious stab 
one feels at seeing any living creature a mortal vic¬ 
tim of the elements. All right-hearted people possess 
it. Crews have risked their lives to take a cat off a 
sinking hulk, firemen an awful death to save a little 
dog from a burning house, a dog or cat they would 
want to open a back window and take a shot at if it 
barked or miaowed at night. But it is instinctive to 
save a creature from the elements—from snow or 
flood or fire. The old alliance of warm-blooded life 
against elemental ruthlessness. 

“Wade out and get it,” Cynthia cried. “Slip off 
your clothes. I’ll turn my back. . . .” 

But the pigeon fluttered up again. Many trans¬ 
atlantic passengers have observed the same maneu¬ 
vers of land birds blown offshore, possibly lost in fog 
when winging to some island or promontory, to 
reach a steamer thoroughly exhausted. Often when 

5 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

too tired to fly, too timid to alight upon the ship, they 
flutter uncertainly about, seem almost to drop, then 
actually do drop until almost on the water’s surface, 
when they struggle up again. 

This brave carrier seemed not only spent as to its 
flight, but hampered in it. Perhaps, also, this im¬ 
pediment reacted badly on its bird intelligence, for 
even with the shore so close at hand it appeared con¬ 
fused. It started to fly back to sea again. Cynthia 
and Shane shouted involuntarily, as if to warn some 
swimmer out there, bewildered by the surf. Their 
voices reached the pigeon, carried their message, no 
doubt, and gave it encouragement. For at the same 
minute it circled, rose a little higher in a last brave 
effort, then glided to the cabin, lighted on the gable, 
lurched, staggered, then rolled down the pitch of 
the roof and fell upon the sand. 

The pair, standing in front of their easels watch¬ 
ing the poor, plucky bird, laid down their palettes 
and brushes and ran to where it had fallen. Shane 
reached the spot a few paces ahead of Cynthia, knelt 
down, and picked up the pigeon. He could feel the 
little heart still pulsing faintly against his hand. 
Under the right wing, close to the body, was a tightly 
folded wad of paper secured by a bit of white cotton 
string. Shane took a small penknife from his pocket 
and cut it free, Cynthia bending over him. 

“Look at that,” he said, disgustedly. “The fool 
that tied that on must have been used to loading 
burros or huskies. No wonder the bird was all in. 
The message is not only four times bigger than it 
ought to be, but improperly secured. It’s bungling, 
and interfered with flight.” He gave the bird to 
Cynthia, who held it in her cupped hands, against 
her cheek. 


6 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“It’s not dead,” she answered. “I’m so glad. 
There’s some sherry in the lunch bag. Shall I give 
it a few drops?” 

“Yes,” he answered, picking with the point of the 
blade at the string around the packet. 

In their interest at what had happened, neither 
observed that the apparently deserted cabin had 
stirred with sinister sounds of life. The roar of the 
surf quenched a rustle inside it. Then one of the 
plank window blinds opened for about an inch. It 
closed softly and if the two had been less absorbed 
or had the swashing of the waters not been constant, 
they might have heard the whine of a rusty hinge 
in the rear. 

Tenderly holding the bird, Cynthia ran back to 
where they Had set down their effects, about fifty 
yards away. Shane had risen to his feet and was 
unfolding the paper, his head bent, when he felt 
rather than saw the close presence of a figure that 
had slipped around the corner of the cabin. At the 
same moment Cynthia screamed. 

Shane looked up quickly to see a man in black 
clothes and a soft felt hat about three paces from 
where he stood. He was a youngish man of about 
Shane’s age, thirty-three or four, and there similarity 
ceased. The narrow, vicious face was unwashed, 
black hair frowsy, and close-set eyes red rimmed, 
this to the general malignancy of features. 

For the briefest of instants they stared at each 
other, Shane holding the crumpled message in one 
hand, his little penknife in the other. Opposite 
him, the man who seemed to have dropped down 
from the blue like a messenger of death blinked once 
or twice as if to clear a vision dazzled by the sudden 

7 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


glare, then without a word of warning drew his 
right hand from a side pocket and leveled a revolver 
at Shane’s heart. 

“Hands up, feller,” he said, in a curiously cracked, 
nasal voice, then sniffed twice, like a dog. “Drop 
that paper.” 

Shane obeyed. The paper dropped to his feet. 
The man opposite him blinked again, sniffed, leaned 
forward and stiffened, then fired. Shane, as if struck 
unprepared by a crushing blow directly above the 
heart, went over backward and sprawled out on the 
sand. Even as he fell he saw the man’s head thrust 
forward, the red-rimmed eyes fastened on his chest, 
and a savage, predatory look on the bony face that 
was like that of a vulture about to strike its beak 
into still living prey. But as if pressed by a detail 
of more importance and satisfied that his victim 
must be inert, the fellow stooped, picked up the 
paper, thrust it in his pocket, then turned and stared 
at Cynthia, who was standing like a statue some fifty 
yards away. 

But only for an instant. Then, slightly stooping, 
he started for her. Perhaps he counted on a paralysis 
of fright and horror, sagging limbs, or a faint from 
which he should take care that she never awoke. If 
so, he counted in error. She turned and darted off 
diagonally to reach the hard-packed sand. She fairly 
flew. There were no flapping, cumbersome skirts 
of four or five years past to hamper the free stride 
of her long, full-muscled legs. Also, much dancing 
had suppled them. Censure the modern dance as 
some may wish, there is no denying its splendid 
development of these members, whether or not at 
the cost of maiden modesty. Cynthia could run like 

8 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


one of Diana’s nymphs, and she now proceeded in 
mortal fear to do that thing. 

Nobody can blame her. Shane, to most obvious 
appearance, had been shot dead through the heart, 
point blank at about two paces, Cynthia the only 
witness to the crime. It was imperative to the safety 
of the assassin that she be likewise and immediately 
removed, when he might bury their bodies in the 
sand, or, without such effort, frame a murder and a 
suicide of the sort not so infrequent in these days 
of criminal folly. 

Wherefore Cynthia ran, no doubt, to the intense 
disgust of the killer, who now proved himself to be 
no mean track athlete also. Far up the beach, a mile 
perhaps, were some tiny specks of people, but others 
might appear at any moment from behind the dunes. 
The man must have realized in the first fifty yards of 
inappreciable gain on the fleeing girl that he had 
bungled the affair. That he should have shot both 
from the crack in the shutter. But he had not seen 
Cynthia run to resuscitate the carrier. She had done 
so as he was softly opening the back door of the 
cabin. He had thought to find them together, read¬ 
ing the message. And he had thought wrongly. 

In the desperate effort to remedy this error he 
pulled up suddenly and began to fire at the running 
girl, with careful aim. But the sprint had made him 
pant. He emptied his weapon without visible effect, 
and in so doing lost another forty or fifty yards. 
He was about to renew the chase when what must 
have seemed to him a prodigy occurred. A yell rang 
out behind him, and he glanced back to see Shane 
charging toward him strongly, if a bit unevenly in 
gait. 


9 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


This sight was too much for the criminal stamina. 
Here was a man shot smack in the heart at a distance 
of about six or seven feet now up and rushing him, 
like a wounded wild beast of inhuman vitality. The 
revolver was empty, and the freak of nature bearing 
down upon him broad of shoulder and deep of chest. 
The blood-thirsty stoat who had reckoned on a quick, 
safe, and easy double killing snarled out a curse, then 
darted up the beach, in between the sand dunes and 
disappeared. Here again he proved himself lacking 
in criminal foresight and backbone, for scarcely had 
the salt sedge screened him than Shane sprawled out 
upon the sand. 


io 


CHAPTER II 


C YNTHIA, glancing back over her shoulder to 
see how she fared in this race whereof the 
prize was life, saw Shane as he fell. She had not 
seen him struggle up to take scratch place in the 
event, so was for a moment entirely bewildered. 
But she knew that it was Shane because of his light 
tweed Norfolk suit. 

She stood for a moment in some doubt, not having 
seen her pursuer disappear in the dunes. But she 
knew he must have gone that way, and she reflected 
that he might at this moment be watching her, peer¬ 
ing through a fringe of sedge like a duck hunter in 
a blind. Or he might have turned back on seeing 
Shane in pursuit, shot him again and gone to the 
cabin, or struck back across for the road or open 
country. That or sneaking around to head her off. 

But Cynthia was a brave girl and Shane might be 
in mortal need of help. It occurred to her that the 
killer could not absolutely flank her, as the beach 
was wide, Shane lying on the hard sand near the 
water’s edge, so that if the assailant were suddenly 
to reappear Cynthia, a splendid swimmer, could slip 
out to sea like an otter. 

Then, before she had taken a dozen steps in this 
direction, Shane sat suddenly upright, clapped both 
hands over his heart, leaned forward with his white 
teeth showing, and even at the distance of a hun¬ 
dred yards Cynthia could hear pattering through 
them what did not sound like prayers. She began 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


to run, and when close to him Shane looked up at 
her with a ferocious grin of pain. 

“The . . . damned . . . skunk!” he growled. 
“The putrid . . . wea . . . wea . . . weasel!” 
He coughed. “You’d better beat it, Cynthia. He 
might come back. . . .” 

“Oh, Shane !” she wailed. “Why aren’t you dead. 
. . . Where are you shot. . . ?” 

“In the ... in the . . .” he began to fumble at 
his chest, “in the . . . sketchbook.” He tugged out 
that badly mangled heart protector from a breast 
pocket. “What a filthy little beast! To plug a man 
. . . with . . . with no warning! My heart feels 
like a big bubble. You’re not . . . not . . .” He 
grinned with pain, panting heavily. 

“I’m all right.” Cynthia shot a wary look at the 
dunes, then leaned over him. “What was he? An 
escaped convict? Or a madman?” 

“Worse than those.” Shane’s paroxysm of pain 
and suffocation was rapidly abating. “I think he 
was a bootlegger.” He began to separate the leaves 
of the sketchbook, that looked as if somebody had 
tried to bore through it with an auger. Against its 
inner cover was a flattened, mushroomed chunk of 
lead. “Look at that!” he growled. Lucky for me, 
though. A steel-jacketed one would have gone right 
through.” 

“Let’s get away,” said Cynthia. “He may be 
lurking round.” 

“I don’t think so. He’ll beat it while the beating’s 
good. Cowardly skunk! Wonder what he thought 
when he saw me plowing after him. He scarcely 
counted on the impact resistance of a tweed coat, 
leather binding, fifty parchment pages with another 


12 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

strip of leather, and a heavy woolen sweater under¬ 
neath. That and about three inches of pectoralis 
major and minor muscles did the business. But, my 
golly, what a jolt! Rotten shame he got off with the 
message. It was a long one, in numerical code.” 

Cynthia sank down beside him, facing the dunes 
and watching them. 

“He might be in ambush, waiting for us to get our 
things.” 

“I don’t think so. He emptied his gat after you 
before he found that I was up and coming. If he’d 
had another cartridge in his jeans he’d have slipped 
it in and fed it to me. Anyhow, wait here. I’ll get 
our duffle.” A sudden thought appeared to strike 
him. “Hold on. There’s something that’s impor¬ 
tant.” He picked up the sketchbook. 

“What?” asked Cynthia, curiously. 

“I’ve got to register his ugly mug . . . while it’s 
fresh on my optic thalami . . . before it fogs the 
slightest bit.” He whipped out his pencil and began 
to sketch with sure and rapid strokes on the inner 
surface of the undamaged cover. But this proved 
unsuitable, being convex from the bullet’s impact and 
too glazed. “That’s no good,” Shane grumbled, 
and drew out his wallet from the pocket opposite. 
“Here’s a nice receipted bill. My tailor blows him¬ 
self for stationery. Just the trick.” He began again 
to sketch with the swift, sure hand of the master 
cartoonist. “I can see the beastly blighter as his 
face looked when he plugged me. This stuff has a 
snapshot beaten miles. The camera lies with the 
expert ease of an old married man, but your skilled 
cartoonist gets a dash of caricature, which is exag¬ 
gerated character, and unmistakable. Looks more 

13 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


like the guy as people think of him than his very 
mug.” 

Cynthia watched silently his unerring strokes. 
She did not resent the sudden deflection of interest 
from her danger to this rapid recording of a danger¬ 
ous criminal’s traits. Shane had thrust aside his 
own more serious injury to achieve a sure identity 
before the image in his vision faded. Here was 
something evanescent to be caught and crystallized 
while it lasted, subtle mind stuff that might dim and 
fog. And as the girl watched she saw the evil, 
sinister features that she herself could not have 
sworn to accurately inscribed. For there are some 
portraits so positive in character that even one who 
has not seen the original knows them instinctively 
to be exact. 

“Wonderful, Shane!” she murmured. 

‘Tve got him,” said he, elatedly. “No wonder, 
considering how he shot it into me. Sort of a man¬ 
drill face . . . one of those wicked-looking baboons. 
I’m apt to see the animal phase of a certain set of 
human features and expression. This was my job in 
the war. French secret service. I’d lamp some sus¬ 
picious bird, male or female, focus the little camera 
I carry in my head, then transfer the visual impres¬ 
sion like this. When their actions didn’t true up 
with what they pretended or anything struck me as 
phony about ’em I would dash off a character sketch, 
in a cafe or train or anywhere, and shoot it in to the 
Bureau de l’lnformation with a few remarks. Or 
maybe the simple query, ‘What d’ye know about 
this animal?’ Trust the French to grab off the tre¬ 
mendous importance of it. Once they let out an 
awful squall: ‘But that is M. de Chose . . . high 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


in the confidence of the state! Bon DieuV I an¬ 
swered that unless he had a twin brother they would 
do well to hoist him a few feet higher ... at the 
end of a rope. I proved my case and they got him.” 
He looked intently at the sketch, added a light touch 
or two, then folded it with care and slipped it in his 
wallet. Three minutes might have been consumed 
in the making of it. “Now, let’s pick up and go, 
dear.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Cynthia said. 

Shane rose, then stood looking at her with a faint 
smile. “All right. But I feel so full of it, right 
now. More than ever.” His face contracted with 
a twinge of pain. “B’lp! B’lp. I’m bubbling inside 
like a bloomin’ old camel. Feel as if I had an inflated 
blowfish in there.” 

“My poor bird!” said Cynthia. This mention of 
the fluttering heart had reminded her suddenly of 
the pigeon’s as she had taken it in her cupped hands. 
She started to walk rapidly back to their easels. 
Shane forged ahead of her and climbed to the top 
of the high dune against which they had placed 
themselves. 

From this outlook the most conspicuous feature 
was a big rectangular building, apparently an air¬ 
craft hangar, that stood in a large open field about a 
hundred yards behind an ordinary summer cottage. 
Shane had not known of any road just there. A small 
car was standing in front of its gate, and as he 
looked he saw two figures pass round the house from 
the rear, get into the car and drive rapidly away, 
heading inland on a road that was scarcely more 
than a sandy lane. 

Striding down, he discovered Cynthia feeding 

i5 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

sherry drop by drop to the ruffled pigeon, by means 
of a clean palette knife. The bird’s head drooped, 
eyes half lidded, but it was alive. 

“What price prohibition,” Shane asked, “when 
you feed wine to a tuckered bootlegger carrier. I 
think I know where he was bound. A cottage back 
there.” 

“A bootlegger bird?” she asked, looking up. 

“That seems to be the easiest guess. This mur¬ 
dering picket acted up to it. I’m going to overhaul 
the cabin.” 

“Look out,” Cynthia cautioned, but did not raise 
her head. 

She was in the same position, gently stroking the 
soft plumage, when Shane came out of the cabin 
some minutes later. He walked to where she sat, 
shot her a quick, keen glance, then flung himself 
down on the sand, took out his pipe, and lighted it. 

“What did you find?” 

“Nothing much. It’s the sort of shebang young 
fellows might run down to camp in for the week¬ 
ends or holidays. Clerks from Wilmington with a 
flivver, coming to shoot snipe or ducks or have a 
spree. Plenty of empty bottles. Two rooms with 
bunks and a rusty stove, and walls decorated with 
fancy ladies and a few old clothes.” He took a few 
puffs at his pipe. “That murderous ape was just on 
lookout here. He broke into the cabin so as to watch 
without being noticed by the coast guard.” 

“On watch for what ?” Cynthia raised a pale face. 
Shane had purposely given her time to adjust herself 
to the reaction. 

“Booze runners, I should say. That’s the most 
obvious answer. A big consignment, perhaps, and 

16 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

straight from the West Indies. Possibly a schooner 
putting in directly from the sea and not caring to 
linger inside the three-mile limit that cuts in here 
close. Nice and handy to all these beach resorts. 
That pigeon was probably overdue, and when he 
heard us chattering about it he lost his head. Car¬ 
ried away by the impulse of the moment. Besides, 
he was a snowbird.’’ 

“A what?” 

“Cocaine sniffer. When any length of time with¬ 
out their prop, they whirl off their pin if you clap 
your hands. He was startled and scared, didn’t 
trust himself to speak sensibly, so fell back on his 
gun. No doubt his last instructions were to shoot 
if any way disturbed. He’d been there too long and 
his powders had run out, and he didn’t dare to leave. 
What a pity he got the message. But I was clean 
bowled over from shock over the heart.” 

“How you managed to run!” Cynthia breathed. 

“Just momentary. I’m all right now, but I’ll have 
a big blue to-morrow. Well, he didn’t get away 
with us, and that’s the main thing.” His eyes gleamed 
as they rested on the girl. “You’re a wonder, Cyn¬ 
thia. To keep your head and sprint like that, and 
come back to me, not knowing but that he might cut 
you off.” 

“What else was there to do? Stay there and be 
murdered ? What are you going to do about it ?” 

“Publish this sketch. That ought to locate him. 
Such a cuss is like a mad dog. I’ll simply say that 
he attacked me while I was on a solitary ramble 
down the beach. When they get him we can put him 
through.” His face hardened. Cynthia hated the 
look. It was too frequent on the man’s lean, hand- 

17 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

some face, and with the hard eyes and harder voice 
had been enough to keep her from obeying the other¬ 
wise ardent desire to be his wife. 

A shiver ran through her. “Put him through 
what?” 

“Well, let’s call it a questionnaire. Deprived of 
their coke, that kind soon weaken. They’re sold 
out already to their vice. After a few hours of 
deprivation such a wretch would deliver his mother 
to everlasting torment for a sniff. Let’s drop it for 
a while.” 

The soft brown head with its auburn lights, ruddy 
and warm, had sunk over the pigeon again. “You 
think this pigeon came from that house back there?” 

“Yes. But he just managed to connect with the 
roof of the shanty, then flopped. But he couldn’t 
have come from far with such a bundle. Wonder 
what it was all about? We’re not at war . . . par¬ 
ticularly, and undesirable aliens trying to enter the 
country have only got to do so via Cuba. It might 
be Chinks or European scum, but they’d scarcely 
intrust so high-priced a job to an irresponsible like 
this.” 

“Perhaps he wasn’t so irresponsible as you think.” 

Shane frowned. “Any man that takes drugs at 
all is all of that. No, I’m inclined to think that this is 
nothing of any great importance. Merely a bit of 
booze running. The location is against any big job 
here within five or six miles of steamship courses 
from northern ports bound up the Delaware. But 
it shows one thing, that nowadays you’ve got to 
watch your step whenever you go out of hollering 
distance for help.” 

“Whenever is it going to be better?” 

18 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Well, so far as the coast is concerned, when the 
government has sense enough to realize that these 
United States are practically a great big island treas¬ 
ure house. We’re like a honey pot with the lid off. 
And now here we are disarming and scrapping our 
ships and telling our graduating classes at Annapolis 
to go out and rustle jobs, selling beans or something. 
For the price and upkeep of even one big super- 
dreadnaught we could strew our coast with small 
patrol boats and give all the boys snappy, sailorly 
work and mighty soon make these rum and scum 
runners as hard to find as worms in a chicken coop.” 

“Then why don’t they?” asked Cynthia. 

“Lack of vision. Politics. Sneaking sympathy 
with the free traders such as used to exist in the 
British Isles when even the nobles on the shore 
estates supported wine and brandy and silk smugglers 
with more or less secrecy and took a certain pride in 
saying slyly, ‘That this old cognac paid no duty to 
the crown,’ and no doubt, then, just as now, the 
bulk of it was tampered with. We had the same 
thing over here with buccaneers and slaves. Then 
we got sick of it and stopped it. A hundred years 
from now all this stuff will look picturesque. You 
may even hold your big-eyed grandchildren enthralled 
by telling them how you were chased down the beach 
by a bootlegger shooting at you with an old-fashioned 
pistol and how lucky it was that the searing, death¬ 
dealing rays of the day had not yet been discovered.” 

“Then you think,” Cynthia asked, “that all this 
could be stopped?” 

“Stopped?” Shane gave a short, contemptuous 
laugh. “It could be stopped so quickly as to make 
the present vast system of bootleggers dizzy. Bust 

19 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


’em and put ’em out of business. Stick ’em with the 
goods. The four classes now in Annapolis and 
wondering where do they go from there could stop 
it if each man was put in command of a small sea¬ 
going patrol poat. Apply the same system to the 
Mexican and Canadian frontiers. Nice, healthy out¬ 
door occupation. Stop it? Of course we could stop 
it if we wanted to and we’d stop something worse 
at the same time. Drugs. Besides, just think what 
a corking sea and land reserve it would furnish for 
the war that would immediately threaten when we 
cut off other countries’ graft. Gently transfer the 
navy to the revenue service. The revenue men have 
always done the rough stuff, anyhow, and had the 
most exciting service—sea-salvage and rescue work 
of whalers and Arctic expeditions and lightships 
struck adrift and all that.” 

“What are you going to do about reporting this 
attack on us?” 

“I’m thinking about that. There are several 
things to consider. The carrier, the determined 
effort to kill us both, and the big balloon shed in a 

field back there. Besides, there’s the fact of our 

* ' 

being down here together.” 

“What about the balloon shed?” Cynthia asked. 

“Well, it seems a funny place for it. Its dimen¬ 
sions are unusual, too. It’s shaped rather like a 
steamer trunk, not high enough for a blimp of any 
size and higher than would be needed for seaplanes. 
It strikes me that I’d like to talk it over with a friend 
of mine who is by way of making some independent 
investigations about all this sort of stuff. Not so 
much bootlegging as certain other criminal activities. 
You’ve met him in my studio—Frank Clamart.” 


20 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Cynthia nodded. “Oh yes—tell me about him.” 

Shane reflected for a moment. “Well, I think I 
shall. In confidence, of course. I got acquainted 
with Clamart about eleven years ago when I was 
studying in Paris. He was then known to the police 
of three continents as Frank Clamart, alias Frank 
the Clam, and he was an expert cracksman.” 
“What?” 

“Just that. He had attempted to burgle the house 
of his own half brother, not knowing this identity. 
He was after the pearls of this half brother’s wife, 
who was a good portrait painter, and she and her 
husband friends of mine. Clamart might have killed 
this half brother, but was dazed by the man’s ex¬ 
traordinary resemblance to himself. He told me 
that when the lights flashed on it was like seeing his 
own reflection in a mirror. There was a famous 
woman with him, thief woman, and to save her he 
got shot himself and captured. But his half brother 
discovered the relationship, a sinister one, on Cla- 
mart’s side, and got him pardoned and went his 
bond.” 

“So that’s the sort of characters you ask your 
friends to meet?” 

“Well, Clamart made good. His old gang were 
leery of him and tried first to frame him and, failing 
that, to get him. Frank saw the writing on the wall 
and beat them to it. He killed their chief devil, one 
Monsieur de Maxeville, known to the police and the 
underworld as Chu-Chu, the Shearer. That broke 
up the mob. Frank married a little chauffeuse, Ro¬ 
salie, who was actually an American girl who had 
married a titled French rotter, who left her flat and 
died or shot himself or something. Then Frank 


21 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


went into the automobile business, but quit it later, 
first for tires, then rubber. He made a big fortune 
legitimately enough during the war. He was liaison 
officer, and I met up with him again in my service, 
L’lnformation Militaire. We worked together for 
a while. His wife died of the flu during the big 
epidemic, and now Frank’s devoting all his time and 
energy and most of his money, I guess, and one of 
the brightest minds I ever met to fighting this sort 
of thing.” Shane jerked his head toward the cabin. 

“Blocking bootleggers?” 

“Not that so much. He’s convinced that the great 
menace to this country is narcotic drugs, and that 
we’re in danger of being deluged by them. Not sure 
but that I agree with him. They’re so much more 
potent and easily handled. According to Frank, 
some of the big bootleggers are already working up 
that line. The trouble seems to be in the supply, 
but wherever there’s the demand the supply will be 
forthcoming, and the demand is growing steadily. 
He’s asked for my help and I’ve promised it. He 
seems to feel that he owes a debt to society for 
his past and he’s taken this way of trying to 
pay it.” 

Cynthia sat up suddenly. The color was back 
in her face. She showed no longer the reaction of 
her ordeal. “Then please don’t mention my connec¬ 
tion with it.” 

“Of course not.” He rose suddenly. “Well, let’s 
go back to the hotel. I’m going to leave you to¬ 
night. All I needed was a good excuse. This sort 
of thing is not just the game for a girl like you.” 

“No doubt you’re right,” she answered. 

The pigeon in her lap fluttered a little, had, unob- 

22 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

served by her, raised its head and was now looking 
about with bright though not affrighted eyes. It 
stretched a wing to its fullest extent, then drew it 
neatly in again. 

“Your little patient has recovered,” Shane said. 
“After all, I was right. Wonderful birds—even 
when they serve the interests of bootleggers.” 

“I’m going to keep it,” Cynthia said. 

Shane shook his head. “No. I want you to let 
it go.” 

“Ah—no!—not to serve them again.” 

“To serve us first. I want it to tell me if I’m 
right about where it lives.” 

“Oh dear!-” 

“Yes, dear. Beg pardon—I forgot.” 

“You’d better not forget. Such expressions are 
apt to slip out unawares. Coupled with our having 
been recognized together in the car, might make 
trouble.” 

“Is that the only reason?” 

She shook her head. “No. I could never marry 
a man that sometimes frightens me—even as a 
friend.” 

“What about me frightens you?” 

“Your—hardness. No doubt you’re kind, but I’ve 
never surprised in you any real tenderness.” 

“Surprise and tenderness don’t go together.” 

“Yes they do-” She spoke impulsively, not 

realizing what she said. “I felt it when I looked 
around and saw that you had not been killed—a 
maternal tenderness-” she amended, hurriedly. 

Shane smiled. “Perhaps you’ll find it one day.” 

“I wonder,” Cynthia mused. “Men change. 
There’s your friend Clamart, once a burglar, now a 

23 





THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

philantropist. I liked his face. I liked everything 
about him but one. He’s got what you have, a sort 
of pleasant ruthlessness that would—would-” 

“Would what?” 

“Well”—she gave him a level look—“that would 
put a shattered drug fiend through the third degree 
to find out what he knew-” 

“Oh, that!” Shane shrugged. “Well, wouldn’t it 
be worth it?” 

“—Even if he died under the ordeal,” she con¬ 
tinued, looking at him steadily. 

“What of it?” Unconsciously his voice, eyes, 
mouth, everything about him expressed that 
hardness against which the sensitive spirit of 
the girl rebelled. “He’s headed that way and 
bound to founder pretty quick. Better take his 
cargo off.” 

“And there you are again,” breathed Cynthia. 

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking 

eggs-” 

“Please don’t use horrid, epigrammatic sophis¬ 
tries. Most proverbs are sophistries. You can’t 
make an omelet that’s any good if you break a rotten 
egg in it. There’s a recent proverb. ‘The camera 
never lies’—and you said not long ago that it was 
the greatest little liar next to an old married man. 
Another falsity. Only stupid people fall back on 
proverbs.” 

“Which proves,” said Shane, smiling, “that mur¬ 
derous snowbirds should be questioned tenderly 
under the soothing influence of cocaine.” 

“Not that. But nothing justifies any form of 
torture. I could never make you see it that way,” 
she added, wearily. 


24 




THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

The pigeon stretched its other wing, then moved 
restlessly so that Cynthia had to restrain it by gentle 
pressure. “It wants to go,” she said. “Perhaps its 
mate is waiting for it.” 

Shane nodded. “The homing instinct—that I 
never had. I’ll go to the top of this dune; then 
when I say the word give back your little birdie 
to the air.” 

He mounted the hillock, then looked down at 
Cynthia. “Lachez — tout” 

She raised the pigeon with a graceful gesture, both 
hands above her head. 

“Go, gentle dove,” Shane quoted. “Wing away 
to your little downy nest of bootleggers.” 

Cynthia opened her hands. The pigeon seemed 
to settle, wings flexed, yet clear and slightly drooped, 
its head erect, eyes alert and questing. Its talons 
gripped Cynthia’s palms with a fierce, almost painful 
clutch. 

Then with a sudden, strong extension of the mus¬ 
cles of its legs it shot straight up, scooped the air 
with wide pinions, described a circle or two, and 
darted off inland. For a moment Shane thought 
that it was going to pass the cottage by in a flight 
now full and strong. But directly over the premises 
its course was checked, then it spiraled down. It dis¬ 
appeared behind the peaked roof. 

Cynthia had scrambled up beside Shane and 
stood now clinging to his arm. “You’re right,” she 
murmured. 

“Looks that way. Admirable effect of illicit 
liquor on a bird.” 

“It’s not illicit,” she protested. “Dad bought it 
before the Act.” 


25 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“And did you get a transportation permit?” 

She shook her head. 

“Well, we all break the law a little now and then. 
Wouldn’t need ’em if we didn’t. ‘Oh, Liberty, Lib¬ 
erty—how many crimes are committed in thy name!’ 
Come on—let’s go.” 


CHAPTER III 


S HANE rang the doorbell of one of the old but 
elegant houses on Gramercy Park, and was ad¬ 
mitted by a Chinese manservant who informed him 
that the master was at home and had not yet retired. 

It was a little after midnight and Shane had just 
arrived from Cape May. He considered that the 
nearly tragic episode down there on the beach should 
be immediately reported, and he could think of no 
person better equipped to take the necessary action 
than his interesting friend, Frank Clamart, ci-devant 
operator of the underworld, and subsequently 
esteemed by it in terror as its most ruthless 
renegade. 

The Chinese servant to admit him was himself sui 
generis . It would have needed a very keen analyst 
of human traits to discover that he was not a China¬ 
man at all, that he was not even an Oriental. A 
committee of widely traveled ethnologists might have 
stripped and scoured him, then put him through a 
searching cross-examination and been left in doubt 
as to his actual origin, if not Chinese. He spoke 
and wrote the language most current on the coast 
of China, and he was familiar, also, with a number 
of dialects. He had a medium-sized body, lean, but 
with bulging knots of muscle, and his face was dis¬ 
tinctly Mongolian, with high, prominent cheek bones, 
wide jaws, and a pointed chin. The orifices of his 
eyes were narrow, though not set on an outward and 
upward slant. There was scarcely any bridge to his 

27 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

nose and the space between its slightly flattened nos¬ 
trils and the mouth was wide and a little convex. 

This man’s name was supposedly Ling Foo. He 
had been christened under that of Michael Rafferty. 
He had been born in the barracks of a British regi¬ 
ment in Hongkong. 

Shane went upstairs and into a study that adjoined 
a bedroom. He found Ciamart seated at his desk, 
where he had apparently been engaged in adding to a 
heap of manuscript stacked up in front of him. 

“Excuse the late call, Frank,” Shane said, sinking 
wearily in a big armchair. “I’ve just had a bizarre 
experience down on the Jersey beach. Thought I’d 
like to ask your advice before taking any other 
action.” 

In the brief but succinct manner of one accustomed 
to make a comprehensive digest of stirring events, 
Shane narrated what had recently occurred, only 
withholding Cynthia’s name and whatever might 
serve to identify her. Perhaps in doing this he made 
a mistake, for it embarked him upon a course to be 
followed only with the utmost difficulty, that of 
working in collaboration with another not in full 
possession of all the facts. 

“I found out about that hangar,” he concluded. 
“Two men known as the Smith brothers had it put 
up last autumn for the construction of a sort of 
combination balloon and hydroplane that they pro¬ 
pose to build for taking tourists up on flights along 
the beach. I didn’t look inside it, but I was told 
that it’s composed of a meshwork plastered with 
light stucco cement over a bamboo frame, with a 
corrugated iron roof. They brought up a schooner 
load of building cane from the West Indies. The 

28 


I 


E RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

stuff was duly examined and passed by the customs. 
Then, apparently, their funds ran short and they’ve 
suspended operations until they can raise the money 
to carry on.” 

Clamart’s keen, granite-colored eyes showed the 
interest that he felt. He was a man of about thirty- 
seven, with handsome, clean-cut features, a clear 
skin, and Shane’s own powerful but rather lean 
physique. 

“How far had they got along with their airship?” 

“Scarcely started it. The coast-guard chief I 
talked to was inside the place not long ago. He 
said that there was no more than the framework, 
partly of bamboo, partly set up in stocks of the same 
material. He seemed to think that they were all 
right so far, but hinted that if the craft proved prac¬ 
tical it might do with a little watching. But he said 
that there had been no sign of any activity at all 
since last October. Of course, I didn’t tell him what 
had happened.” 

“I’m glad of that, Shane. I think you’ve fallen on 
something tremendously important. A lot more so 
than any mere rum-running business. The nature 
of the attack fits in nicely with a theory of mine. 
Any other data you can think of?” 

Shane reflected. “Well, one thing I didn’t men¬ 
tion was a faint, peculiar smell I noticed in that 
cabin on the beach. It wasn’t an unclean smell, nor 
that of any disinfectant that I know of, nor perfume, 
nor drug.” 

Clamart went to a cabinet, unlocked it, and took 
out a small object about the size and shape of a 
mandarin orange. He handed it to Shane, who dis¬ 
covered it to be a dull red in color, with a dry and 


29 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

slightly scaly surface. He smelled it and shook his 
head. 

“What is it—opium?” 

“Yes, the pure dried gum wrapped in the leaves.” 

“It wasn’t this sort of a smell, nor that of the 
smoke. It seemed to have a faint odor like bananas.” 

“That suggests acetone, but I don’t know why 
acetone.” 

“It’s a beastly nuisance he got away with the code,” 
said Shane, regretfully. 

“Can’t have everything, my boy. But you’ve got 
something worth a lot more than the code, and that’s 
your sketch. Do you think there’s any chance that 
you were followed here?” 

“Well, now, I couldn’t swear to that. After tak¬ 
ing this girl I’d run down to see to her hotel, I got 
in my car and drove straight back here. Of course, 
I thought of being followed, and looked back now 
and then. I stopped twice before I struck the Lincoln 
Highway and was passed once by two men in an 
open car and once by a motorcyclist. But none of 
them were this scoundrel. Then, on the big pike, 
after it got dark, I passed and was passed, myself, 
by the usual amount of traffic. Here in town, of 
course, I couldn’t tell anything.” 

There came a soft tapping at the door. At Clam- 
art’s word the Chinaman, Ling Foo, thrust in his 
curious face. 

“The countess, sir.” 

“Ask her to come up.” And then to Shane, 
“Don’t go. It’s Leontine.” 

Shane was slightly acquainted with this unusual 
personality and knew her history. Cynthia also had 
met her with Clamart at Shane’s studio. The two 

30 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


women had become, in fact, quite intimate, and Cyn¬ 
thia had undertaken to paint a portrait of the 
countess. But the hitherto carefully sheltered Boston 
girl would have been considerably startled to know 
that the beautiful Russian of such distinguished cul¬ 
ture had shared actively in Clamart’s own past. 
Shane knew it, but was convinced that she shared 
also no less in Clamart’s complete reformation. He 
was not, however, aware that this had occurred but 
very recently in its completion. He had taken it for 
granted that both had forsworn all criminal practice 
and association at the same time, and this opinion had 
been confirmed by the documentary testimonials of 
her distinguished war service that Leontine had 
shown to Cynthia. Shane had no knowledge what¬ 
ever of Leontine’s more recent criminal activities. 
It was Clamart who actually was Leontine’s sponsor 
and Shane had accepted Clamart’s indorsement. 

Leontine now entered with a nod to first one, then 
the other, of the two men who had risen. She was 
a woman who gave always the impression of a 
gentle-mannered queen in exile—sweetly appreciative 
of a courtesy to which she feels herself no longer 
entitled as a sovereign. Leontine had never been of 
the dominant type nor self-assertive, except when in 
a passion. She had grown even gentler with adver¬ 
sity, since the war where she had played a useful and 
heroic part. Necessity had driven her back to crime, 
though not of the former sort. But it seemed to 
Shane that she had now found precisely the stabilizer 
for her complex morality—the employment of her 
astonishing experience and acumen to assist in a per¬ 
sonal crusade against practices for which any great 
freebooter of history could have felt nothing but dis- 

3i 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


gust. Clamart had given Shane to understand that 
Leontine was his paid assistant in a certain line of 
criminal investigation he had undertaken, and that 
might uncover something far more serious than traf¬ 
fic in spurious spirits or even drugs. 

Leontine was neither young nor old, no longer 
girlish, nor yet ripely mature in a sense of the limit 
of perfection being reached. She was fine rather 
than regal, and had none of the high-featured 
haughtiness of aspect that one associates with roy¬ 
alty. Her facial traits were, in fact, softly modeled, 
like her manner; eyes wide, long, and serene; cheek 
bones high, but not too prominent; a straight nose 
and a beautiful smile, actually tender and with that 
mobile obliquity of the upper lip at its center that 
suggests a sort of tenuous expectation of a caress. 
All of this for Leontine in repose. But between such 
a portrait and that of her in violent emotion lay all 
the difference to be recorded between good and bad, 
black and white, heat and cold, any other extremes. 

Shane now observed her with close attention be¬ 
cause he had immediately detected her thinly veiled 
excitement. Leontine never had been very good at 
the masking of emotions, but, aware of this, she 
had long since learned the trick of making any dis¬ 
play of agitation refer apparently to some other 
cause, even when one had to be instantly invented. 

So now, at sight of Clamart and Shane together, 
one would have said that her disturbed equilibrium 
was due to annoyance at Clamart’s indiscretion in 
permitting her to be put in a compromising posi¬ 
tion before a recent acquaintance and a friend of 
Cynthia’s. 

Clamart was quick to discover this. “It’s all 

32 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

right, Leontine. Mr. Emmet understands. He has 
just had good reason to understand. There need be 
no reserve.” 

Leontine’s tine eyes turned quickly to Shane, and 
she said, to his intense surprise, “They’ve tried to 
kill him, also?” 

“Also?” asked Clamart quickly. “Who else?” 

“They’ve done for Colling,” said Leontine. 

“Good Lord! When?” He drew her a chair. 

“About an hour ago, so far as I could tell.” 

Shane was shocked and startled. He knew 
slightly the man to whom she had reference. A 
fellow member of two or three of his clubs, and with 
whom he had several times seen Clamart. But what 
principally upset him was Leontine’s immediate asso¬ 
ciation of himself with Colling. 

“Let’s hear about it,” Clamart said, quietly. 

“I went to his apartment about an hour and a 
half ago. It’s on the second floor, you know. The 
elevator boy said he thought that he was in. I 
rapped and then, as there was no answer, tried the 
door. It was unlocked, so I went in and, not finding 
him there, thought that he might have run out for 
a moment, as my appointment was at eleven. He 
has several friends in the building, or he might even 
have run down the stairs and gone out on some 
errand when the elevator was up. So I sat down 
and waited and, while waiting, I noticed a faint, 
peculiar odor.” 

Clamart glanced at Shane. “Of what sort?” 

“I can’t describe the smell,” said Leontine. “It 
was elusive and sickly sweet, like rotten fruit. Col¬ 
ling uses a French scent, but it wasn’t like that. 
Then I thought suddenly of having noticed it or 

33 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


something very like it once when I was gilding some 
picture frames.” 

“That’s it,” Shane exclaimed. 

Leontine shot him a curious look. 

“Go on,” said Clamart. 

“I looked around to see if he had been retouching 
his light brackets or gilded furniture or anything. 
I even went into his dining room. There was a bowl 
of fruit with some rather overripe bananas on the 
sideboard, and I thought it might possibly come from 
that. So, feeling rather cross at being made to wait, 
I went back and sat down and waited. At the end 
of fifteen minutes I got very nervous, as I always 
do when there’s something fatal in the air, so I got 
up and started to search the apartment. I found 
him sitting on the edge of his bed, with one shoe in 
his hand and his slippers at his feet. Evidently he 
had died in the act of changing. He was dressed in 
a dinner suit and leaning a little against the foot¬ 
board, with one elbow over it. His position was so 
natural that I couldn’t believe him to be dead until 
I’d held the little mirror from my vanity case against 
his lips. He was a strong, healthy man, you know, 
and something of an athlete.” 

“What did you do then?” Clamart asked. 

“I went out and down the stairs, where I found 
the elevator boy reading an evening paper on his 
bench. I told him that Mr. Colling was out and that 
I couldn’t wait any longer. Then I got in a taxi and 
came straight here.” 

Clamart leaned back in his chair. “Deuced awk¬ 
ward,” he said, calmly. “Just when I need you the 
most. I suppose that elevator boy has seen you at 
least half a dozen times.” 


34 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“More than that. Besides, he’s a sly rascal and 
used to looking people over pretty carefully. He 
supplies the fast crowd that have apartments there 
with drugs and liquor, and no doubt he considers 
Colling one of his best customers. What makes 
it worse, I was seen by the telephone operator 
and doorman of my own hotel, farther down the 
street, to go out a few minutes before I went 
to Colling’s apartment, so there’s no chance of 
an alibi.” 

Clamart frowned. “Was there anybody round 
the door when you went in?” 

“No. Not close enough to recognize me. There 
were some men across the street, going to or coming 
from one of the clubs. Who do you suppose killed 
him, and why and how?” 

Clamart shook his head. “Haven’t the remotest 
idea. A man like Colling is apt to have vicious 
enemies. He was always running after women, or, 
what’s worse, they were running after him. Two 
sets of women —demimondaines and society, and the 
sort that touch a little on the fringes of both, and 
they’re the most pernicious of all. He was a man 
about town and belonged to some pretty good clubs, 
but, to tell the truth, if we hadn’t needed him so 
badly just now I wouldn’t be heartbroken at what 
has happened. I never trusted him much, and the 
dimensions of our game are getting to a size where 
any day he might have double-crossed us and hauled 
out rich. But the important thing just now is what 
are we going to do about you, Leontine?” 

She smiled. “That is rather vital to me.” 

“And to me. Let us say to the country. Here 
we are with our net nicely spread and getting ready 

35 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


to haul in on the purse string, and now your end 
is adrift because of one rotten, worthless, bootleg¬ 
ging, drug-peddling, yellow elevator boy.” He 
drummed on the table with his fingers, his broad 
forehead wrinkled in thought. “When I think of 
what this country faces at this moment, I’m sorely 
tempted to throw this scoundrel in the discard.” 

Leontine shook her head. 

Shane stared at Clamart, trying to determine just 
what he meant. 

“But do you realize what is pretty sure to come 
of it unless something of the sort is done? With 
your known former criminal affiliations, you’d never 
have a show. I’m inclined to think that this was 
some private score to be settled. If it had been the 
Ring, they’d have tried first to buy up Colling.” 

“Perhaps they had and failed,” Leontine sug¬ 
gested. 

“I don’t think so, for the simple reason that if 
they had, I believe they would have succeeded. Now 
if it had been myself, that would have been another 
matter. They know that I am rich and that my 
efforts are not confined to educational propaganda.” 

He leaned back in his chair, staring at her thought¬ 
fully. “I could send Ling Foo up there to tell the 
fellow that if he’d go with him immediately, Ling 
would take him to a man who had unlimited hop 
to dispose of at half the current price. The joke of 
it is that Ling actually could, and this boy, Manuel, 
thinks Ling to be one of Colling’s scouts.” 

“If Ling could keep him away for only an 

hour-” Leontine began; but Clamart interrupted 

her in his curious voice that was distinct when by an 
effort he made it so, at other times with no carrying 

36 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

power, husky and a little muffled. He had once 
told Shane the reason for this, an injury to the vocal 
chords that had resulted from an escharotic poison 
slipped into his drink and discovered by him as he 
was on the point of swallowing it. He had managed 
to arrest the act, but choked in doing so, drawing 
enough into the trachea to damage seriously the 
delicate mechanism of the larynx. This was but one 
of the many baffled attempts upon his life at a certain 
crisis in it. 

“Ling can keep him away indefinitely, or definitely, 
if you like,” Clamart said, with a frown. 

“Nothing like that, Frank.” Leontine spoke with 
a quick, impassioned protest that gave Shane a clearer 
idea of what Clamart was intimating. 

“Well,” Clamart retorted, “it would be rather 
more than a pity if this poisonous tout of a Manuel 
were to prove the half-tide rock on which our efforts 
split.” 

“Then have Ling lure him off and detain him for 
the rest of the night, if he can manage it. That 
would let me out. But nothing worse, Frank. That 
sort of thing is not for us.” She leaned forward 
eagerly. “Send him to Don Quinto. Have Ling 
take him there. The chances are he’d go if he hadn’t 
yet learned about Colling.” 

Clamart stared at her an instant, then struck his 
thigh. “That’s a thought that’s downright inspira¬ 
tion. Wait a minute.” Fie sprang up and went out. 
Shane, puzzled and uncomfortable, looked doubt¬ 
fully at Leontine. There was something going on 
he could not understand and he was not sure that 
he cared to have it explained to him. There seemed 
to be some sinister association between the attack 

37 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


upon himself and what Clamart and Leontine ac¬ 
cepted as the assassination of this man Colling. 
There was that peculiar odor that both he and 
Leontine had noticed. 

If Leontine herself was curious about his presence 
there at that late hour, she gave no hint of it. She 
sat leaning forward a little in her chair, staring in 
an abstracted way at a thin eddy of smoke mounting 
from the dying wood fire in a straight, gray column. 
Shane studied Leontine. He thought he had never 
seen a more beautiful woman, in the fine perfection 
of each physical detail of her, and there was an ap¬ 
pealing quality about her features and expression, 
that ineradicable stamp of a soul approaching its 
salvation through the running of some fearful gant¬ 
let of past experience. Shane found it impossible 
to believe that she had ever been vicious or depraved 
or even criminal, according to whatever code of 
ethics she might have had. Passionate episodes 
there had undoubtedly been, but these of an idealistic 
character, he thought, though wrong ideals, and sub¬ 
sequently rectified. 

For some minutes they sat there in silence. Then 
Clamart came in, his handsome face wearing a sar¬ 
donic smile. 

“This will be good if it works,” he said. “A 
luminous idea, Leontine.” He looked at Shane. 
“Sometimes a very small pebble can dump a big 
apple cart if it happens to be top heavy and on too 
much of a slant.” 

“This elevator boy, Manuel, being the pebble?” 
Shane asked. 

“Yes, and Leontine perched too high on the cart. 
Well, let’s hope we’re going to right it again. If 

38 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

we got a spill just now it might result in a deluge 
of this country by narcotic drugs.” 

“Don’t you think the country would shed a flood 
of that sort, Frank? It has managed so far to 
eliminate its poisons pretty well. Why should it fall 
for dope?” 

“It shouldn’t, really. There’s no affinity at all 
between narcotic drugs and the clean, vigorous, 
American temperament. But the country, at this 
moment, is in a dangerously receptive state—pores 
all open so to speak.” 

“The fault of prohibition?” 

“No. That ought really to help. Prohibition 
tends to the better health of the majority, and robust 
health is the best resistant to drug addiction. Sickly 
people or alcoholics are more apt to crave drugs 
than robust folk. Opium, particularly, belongs to 
the sodden physical inertia of poorly nourished 
Orientals. But the trouble is that such a lot of fools 
have been monkeying with the bootlegger buzz saw, 
and being fed all sorts of substitutes for alcohol. 
That’s not the fault of prohibition any more than 
it would be the fault of a railroad ordinance pro¬ 
hibiting people from walking on the track if the 
result of such a ruling was to create a wild desire 
to make that right of way the favorite promenade 
of a lot of people who had never previously cared 
much about walking on the tracks. Instead of 
yowling about the disorders caused by prohibition, 
why can’t people ask themselves what the country 
would be like in these feverish, unsettled days if all 
the ginmills were running full bore? I can’t see any 
sense at all in blaming any law passed with a view to 
the better health and happiness of a commonwealth 

39 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

for the damage that comes of perversely breaking it. 
Don’t blame the law. Blame the lawbreakers, espe¬ 
cially when the majority of them voted for it. And 
so far as the Enforcement Act is to blame, the trouble 
there was its size and the fact that it slipped off the 
ways a little too soon. It was like launching a big 
ship before it was properly calked. The people 
insisted that it be launched. If it had been set afloat 
as a sound and stanch craft, then the country would 
have had prohibition from the start, been aboard a 
dry ship for a long voyage, and after the first throes 
of seasickness would have got itself adjusted. 

“But what actually has happened is this. The ship 
began to leak, slowly at first, then a little faster, 
then a little slower as the bigger holes were plugged, 
then a little faster again. But during this time a 
habit that has always been with every country to 
some extent, that of narcotic drugs began slowly 
to increase. People first got to substituting alcoholic 
medicines for the purer forms of alcohol, and to 
make nasty concoctions that were themselves more 
in the nature of drugs than spirits. They began to 
accustom themselves to the weird reactions of these, 
just as they might to those of any other poison like 
nicotine or betel nut or aconite or kola or certain 
plant distillations like that of the maguey. As they 
continued in these crude attempts at making alcohol, 
they acquired an appetite for aldehydes and fusel 
oil and other poisonous by-products, so, instead of 
being alcoholics, they have been training their tissues 
to react to fearfully injurious narcotics and to de¬ 
mand them. And all the while the purer and more 
potent drugs have been coming in. Many habitues 
would now prefer these to good whisky or gin or 

40 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

brandy or rum. Your cigarette smoker or chewer 
of betel nut wrapped up in a leaf of aconite would 
rather have opium than alcohol. It is more in line 
with his form of intoxication. 

“Now the first to appreciate this is naturally that 
spawn of hell which is the bootlegger. Many of 
them, from running a side line in drugs, are now 
beginning to abandon their cumbersome bottle traffic 
for small, concentrated packages. Why use a truck 
when one’s pocket will answer? Why a steamer 
or schooner when a speed launch can carry the 
cargo? 

“But, like all big businesses, especially unlawful 
ones, the commerce requires for its huge margin of 
profit a joining of forces, a combination, organiza¬ 
tion, or ring. And as you and I know, probably 
better than anybody else, this is precisely what is 
taking place. The menace is concentrating, becoming 
like the precipitate of a solution. As the prohibition¬ 
ists work frantically to plug the leaks of their vessel, 
and succeed-” 

Clamart paused suddenly, his head aslant. It was 
a foggy, drizzly night in February. There had been 
a wood fire on the hearth of his study, but this had 
burned out and was now extinct. He was sitting 
with his back to the fireplace, and in the silence of 
his meditation there came a slight rustle behind him, 
so slight, in fact, as to escape the observation of the 
other two. 

But Clamart heard it and swung about in his chair, 
though not with any gesture of alarm. It appeared 
that some fragment of an ember had, by settling, 
been fanned to life. A faint band of smoke not white 
nor yet yellow was mounting slowly. There was 

4i 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


nothing remarkable in this, but as Clamart’s eyes 
rested on it he observed that instead of going up 
the chimney it played sinuously against the arch of 
the fireplace, then began to swirl almost impercep¬ 
tibly up under the mantel. Leontine, looking at 
Clamart, noticed the intensity of his stare. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

“I’m wondering about that chimney. It’s warm 
and ought to draw.” 

“The cold and damp outside,” Shane suggested. 

“It has never smoked before, even on lighting it 
with the chimney cold.” He rose suddenly, stepped 
to the two large windows, and opened them wide. 
“Come into the other room.” 

Shane and Leontine obeyed. Clamart opened the 
back windows also, then glanced at Leontine. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“My heart.” She clasped her hands over her left 
side. “It’s beating so furiously.” 

“So is mine. How about you, Shane?” 

“Same thing. Thought it was the shock it got a 
few hours ago—and this excitement.” 

“No, it’s something else, I think. Stand here in 
the draft of the window both of you, and take some 
deep breaths.” 

All three proceeded with this exercise. Presently 
Leontine laughed. 

“My word, Frank! I believe we’ve worked up a 
silly scare.” 

“It would be the first time, then. Besides, there’s 
been nothing to upset me, and my old pump is work¬ 
ing like a missing motor. Dots and dashes, whanged 
out by a sledge hammer.” 


42 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“I feel curiously light,” said Leontine, “as if there 
was no weight to me at all. It’s rather pleasant.” 

“That’s it,” said Shane; “like sucking at the tube 
of an oxygen cylinder. What the deuce do you make 
of it, Frank?” 

“Same thing that got Colling, I think. Dropped 
down the chimney and the flue plugged. I heard a 
rustle in the fireplace. The roofs of these houses 
are on a level. After listening to you and Leontine, 
I got to thinking, and so was on my guard. Perhaps 
it’s just nerves. I don’t know. I feel all right now.” 

“So do I,” said Leontine, and laughed again. 
“Really, Frank, I’m afraid we’ve been absurd.” 

“I feel bully,” said Shane. “Just as I’ve said, like 
taking a swig of oxygen. But that might be the 
fresh air.” 

Clamart frowned. “I’d hate to think I was get¬ 
ting the fidgets in my middle age. There’s some ex¬ 
cuse for you and Leontine. You’ve both had a shock. 
But I’m normal. Besides, I’ve weathered too many 
clever efforts to get me by poison to be stampeded 
around the heart by so faint a whiff as we could 
have got.” 

“Let’s call it overimagination,’ r said Shane. “You 
were looking for it.” 

“Yes, and I was looking at a striped wasp one day 
and saw it curl up and die on the edge of a bowl of 
peach ice cream. But that didn’t set my heart to 
hammering even when the man opposite me, one 
Ivan, reeled over dead from prussic-acid poisoning, 
disguised by the flavoring of the ice cream.” 

Leontine turned very white. She swayed a little. 
Clamart steadied her. 

“Sorry. I shouldn’t haye referred to that. But 

43 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

if this thing now is real and not imaginary, it must 
be some very subtle etheric toxin that acts instantly 
on the heart center and brain.” 

“Colling was sitting almost upright with one shoe 
in his hand,” Leontine murmured. 

“You wouldn’t think that anything, no matter how 
volatile, could diffuse itself as fast as that,” said 
Shane. 

“No,” Clamart agreed, “nor get one so imme¬ 
diately. Still, the same thing happened to the vic¬ 
tims at Pompeii, and St. Pierre on Martinique. Its 
vibrations were as sudden as sound or smell.” 

“But there was no smell to it,” Shane objected. 

“The smell is something else. I’ve an idea about 
that.” 

Leontine drew a deep breath. “It was actually 
pleasant. For a moment I felt like an angel.” 

“We’d all have kept on feeling that way if we’d 
stayed there another second or two,” Clamart said. 
“A real euthanasia when it goes through. Can’t you 
guess who made it?” 

Leontine nodded. “Humboldt. I told you I saw 
him coming out of that Actor’s Hostel place.” 

“Probably been there to peddle dope. Nice job 
for a chemist great enough to discover a principle 
like this. Probably hard up, and a dishonest medico 
has got to live. I say, Shane, do you happen to know 
Julius Jedburgh, the big promoter?” 

“Not personally,” Shane answered. “But I’ve 
got to do some character sketches of him for our 
Sunday supplement. I went to Atlantic City chiefly 
on that account, but just missed him.” 

“Well, get about it as soon as you conveniently 
can. You know Olivant, his secretary?” 

44 


\ 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Shane nodded. “I’ve known Olivant off and on 
from boyhood. Never thought him such a much. 
Little brother to the rich. Have you got anything 
on Jedburgh ?’ 1 

“Not yet,” Clamart answered, “but we’ll talk 
about that later.” 

It was evident to Shane that Clamart desired 
him to leave. The man now showed a sort of 
restlessness, as if he had thought of something that 
he desired to put into immediate execution. Leontine 
seemed to feel it, too, for she rose. 

“I think we’d better go,” she said to Shane. “I 
can always tell when Frank is germinating. He’s 
like the mango trick.” 

“All right,” said Shane. “My car’s outside. I’ll 
leave you at your hotel.” 


45 


CHAPTER IV 


M INDFUL of his commission to make some 
sketches of Julius Jedburgh, the multimil¬ 
lionaire promoter, Shane called up his house the 
following morning to ask permission to execute this 
order. 

He was answered by Olivant, Jedburgh’s confi¬ 
dential secretary, who, after referring the request, 
replied in his pleasant, well-bred voice: 

“Why, yes, Emmet. But Mr. Jedburgh’s awfully 
busy just now and wants to know if you can’t manage 
to sketch him while he’s at his work, here in his 
study at the house.” 

“That will be first rate,” Shane answered. “Then 
I’ll be up in about an hour.” 

He then called up Cynthia’s apartment to learn 
that she had returned by train and was none the 
worse for her adventure. He did not call Clamart 
nor Leontine. He was not at all sure that he cared 
to involve himself further in Clamart’s most laudable 
campaign, and while he admired Leontine and be¬ 
lieved in the sincerity of her reform, she, also, 
impressed him as a decidedly high and uncertain ex¬ 
plosive. He was worried about the intimacy that 
seemed to have developed between Cynthia and her¬ 
self, and determined to put an end to it if able to do 
so unobtrusively. As for the bizarre and tragic 
happenings of the night before, he preferred not 
to think of them at all any more than he could help. 
It seemed preposterous to assume that his connec- 

46 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tion with the business could be more than purely 
fortuitous. 

On his way to the Jedburgh mansion on upper 
Fifth Avenue, Shane reviewed in his mind what he 
had heard of this outre and forceful personality, 
and the gossip in regard to Olivant’s position as his 
secretary. Jedburgh seemed to be a man who desired 
to burst suddenly upon the world as a sort of pluto¬ 
cratic comet, blaze his way across its heavens, then 
disappear from the sight of men, to leave only a 
memory of splendor. He was an absolute materialist, 
believed in nothing beyond himself, loved nothing 
but himself, and with the cessation of his own 
earthly consciousness his entire firmament would 
cease to exist. Often he deplored in a vague way the 
fact that this material consciousness had not the use 
of a number of vigorous bodies instead of one, that 
he might more fully absorb, appreciate, enjoy, and 
fairly revel in his vast possibilities for pleasure. 

His family consisted of a single daughter, of 
whom he was fond in the appreciative way that 
he was fond of anything that suited him, his less 
active appetites. He considered her to be about the 
finest thing that he possessed, and he recognized with 
satisfaction the fact that if he had caused this 
daughter to be constructed to his order in flawless 
body, in mind unencumbered with the spiritual 
qualities that he despised, the work could not have 
been better executed. 

Jedburgh was, of course, a shrewd judge of people 
within the limitations that were wide enough for his 
own very distinct acquirements of service. He could 
tell an honest man from a dishonest one, a man who 
respected and was actually devoted to him from one 

47 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

who was not. He understood the peculiar reactions 
by which the former might be brought about. And 
as a result of this power of discrimination he had 
pretty well managed so that those men and women 
who were close to him in service were not only bound 
to him by strong, personal interest, but actually liked 
and admired him and in most cases endowed him 
with princely qualities that he knew well enough he 
did not possess. 

Of this court was a young man who might have 
borne the title of first private secretary and captain 
of the royal guards. His name was John Olivant 
and he was of good family. Among other dis¬ 
tinguished considerations, he was bound to Jedburgh 
by a debt of gratitude, and Jedburgh, though he had 
never felt any gratitude for anybody or anything him¬ 
self, was yet able to appreciate the value of that 
quality in others. He had saved John from being in¬ 
dicted and most probably convicted of manslaughter. 
It had been on Jedburgh’s part no more than such an 
act of common decency and justice as any fair- 
minded person might have rendered to another. But 
because Jedburgh, as sole witness to the lamentable 
affair, had postponed a steamer sailing and taken the 
trouble to go before the coroner’s jury and swear 
robustly that Olivant had acted purely in self-defense, 
then gone on to testify in precisely what manner, a 
finding of justifiable homicide was returned. It was 
right enough. A stalwart mendicant had demanded 
alms of Olivant at two o’clock of a sleeting January 
morning on Fifth Avenue opposite the Park. Olivant 
had answered truthfully that he had nothing smaller 
than a ten-dollar bill, and he could not afford to give 
him that. The beggar had cursed him, when John, 

48 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

a young man of spirit and some gift of speech, had 
cursed him back. Mistaking a modulated voice and 
rather slender figure for effeminacy, the vagrant had 
struck at Olivant, who parried, then landed a sharp 
punch on the chin with the fatal result that the tramp 
slipped on the icy pavement, went over backward, 
struck his head upon the curb, and died four hours 
later in a hospital. 

Jedburgh’s big bulk, afoot, had loomed up through 
the sleet as Olivant was leaning over the prostrate 
man. Olivant told Jedburgh what had happened. 
Jedburgh had not actually seen it, but he believed 
Olivant and promptly said he had witnessed the 
whole affair. Jedburgh was not the person to miss 
such an easy chance of binding a man to him. When, 
after the inquest, Olivant went to thank him, Jed¬ 
burgh looked him over, listened to his cultured voice, 
asked a question or two that disclosed his embar¬ 
rassed circumstances, decided that he was precisely 
the sort of young society youth he could make good 
use of, then offered him a sort of nondescript position 
that was gratefully accepted. Jedburgh was pleased 
to see that Olivant did not seem much concerned 
about the fact of having unintentionally caused the 
death of a man. He told Jedburgh, that if the man 
had asked him decently, he’d have given him the 
ten, considering the night and the fact that he had, 
himself, just passed so pleasant an evening. 

Jedburgh had a weakness for well-bred fools, and 
he believed Olivant to be all of the former and with 
a fair proportion of the latter, if only on the one 
count that, according to Jedburgh’s creed, any man 
of Olivant’s position and opportunities who could not 

49 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

make money must be something of a fool. Perhaps 
he was right. 

And now, after two years of service, Jedburgh was 
thoroughly pleased with his secretary. Olivant ap¬ 
peared to possess precisely that combination of good 
breeding and tact and ease of manner, with the lack 
of any great amount of intelligence or personal am¬ 
bition, that Jedburgh desired in his immediate court, 
and he had changed his mind about Olivant’s being a 
fool, his or anybody’s fool. Jedburgh’s lovely 
daughter, Sharon, appeared to like him, too. It had, 
once or twice, occurred to Jedburgh that the two 
might fall in love and wish to marry. That was the 
least of his care, whether they did or not. He was 
popularly supposed, in their large and curiously jum¬ 
bled circle, to be quietly but profoundly devoted to 
his daughter. This was not true. Jedburgh was that 
complete type of supreme egoist who is the generous, 
magnificent, unaggressive sort. He was thought to 
be a man of heart because he gave largely and with¬ 
out bothering to investigate the worthiness of the 
demand. 

This was merely because he had a splendidly de¬ 
veloped sense of proportion as to what to bother 
himself about and what not to. He did not even 
bother himself about his many self-indulgences. He 
was profligate in the way that a rich and powerful 
Oriental potentate might have been. He never sued 
for favors, seldom even bid for them, merely stepped 
into the market and purchased what he wanted, not 
caring, where his personal desires were concerned, 
whether he was overcharged or not. He was scarcely 
even criticized; his Jedburghian behavior was a law 
unto itself. When he desired to break a law of the 

50 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

land, he purchased the privilege, and in such a way 
that there could be no record of the transaction. He 
hated records of any sort. The bulk of his vast 
wealth was unrecorded. As fast as he acquired it 
he stowed it away in unregistered, nontaxable se¬ 
curities. Interest did not interest him much, except 
as it compounded, and then he forgot it. His busi¬ 
ness policy was not the accruing of interest, but big, 
separate turnovers made in repeated coups. 

But Jedburgh had one profound failing, this 
threatening to become a monomania. He could not 
get money enough. There was not enough of it in 
the world. If he had owned North and South Amer¬ 
ica, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, he could 
not have rested until he had gathered in Polynesia, 
New Zealand—whatever was left. 

Shane discovered his big person—less big, actually, 
than its impression—seated at a desk in a room of 
his house that would have made the audience chamber 
of any king look shabby. This singular man, who 
had been brought to America as a babe in a stinking 
steerage of an old Cunarder and had begun life as a 
newsboy, was in his fifty-second year. He was prac¬ 
tically self-taught, but had been a whole college of 
instructors for himself. He was newspaper taught, 
the whole of the sheet, the entire mass of Sunday 
editions. He was a finished product of a journalistic 
education. Of all his reading, it is safe to say that 
ninety per cent had been the press. Though he had 
undoubtedly a strain of Semitic blood, he was not a 
Jew. He possessed all the advantages of the He¬ 
brew without being encumbered by the obligations of 
Judaism. He professed no religion at all while giv¬ 
ing generously to almost any cult that he happened 

5i 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


to brush against. In person he was not unhandsome, 
a sort of steam shovel of a man, powerful under a 
layer of physiological adipose, with a big nose that 
was neither Roman nor Jewish—just a big nose; 
either of his eyebrows would have made a proud 
mustache for an alderman. His own was closely 
cropped, with no effort to hide a fearful mouth, full 
lipped, sensual, yet not cruel; his chin was set too 
far back, but fairly big; stripped for his bath, his 
muscles were appalling and he was hairy. A gorilla 
would have thought twice before tackling him. The 
most desperate of footpads would have looked at 
his massive jewelry with no great covetousness, as 
one might look at the gold stacked up inside the 
paying teller’s window, or the gems on the howdah 
of a viceroy’s elephant. Jedburgh gave out tre¬ 
mendously the impression of one as able to protect 
his valuables among a society of lesser men as a big 
bull king elephant to protect his tusks. 

Wherefore the contrast between his overwhelm¬ 
ing personality and that of John Olivant, who was 
seated facing him at one corner of the desk, would 
have been extreme to anybody taking the trouble to 
observe it, which, as a matter of fact, scarcely any¬ 
body could have done, any more than one would 
have drawn a contrast between the United States 
Treasury and the neat, orderly bank that faces it. 
The two were not comparable. One, the massive 
depository of enormous sums, the other, a sort of 
medium for clearing the exchange of lesser ones. 
Olivant sat in rather a negligent attitude, a good 
deal as a pampered son might sit in consultation with 
a parent, august to others, but not to him. It was 
rather a curious thing about Jedburgh that he never 

52 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

required any deference of manner from those with 
whom he came in contact. His attitude toward men 
and affairs had remained precisely that of earlier 
days when he had been a general contractor. Even 
now, the generic term for any man with whom he 
happened to be engaged in business, large or small, 
was: “this feller—that feller.” 

He acknowledged Olivant’s presentation of Shane 
w r ith a brief stare and nod and a rumbling, “H’are 
ye?” then proceeded with his occupation of glancing 
over sundry papers, with no further concern of his 
caller, leaving Olivant to occupy himself with what¬ 
ever might be in order. In fact, Jedburgh became 
immediately so utterly oblivious to Shane as to give 
the artist the impression of having gone to the zoo 
to sketch a new animal just purchased—a wart hog 
or bear, surly in captivity. Jedburgh carried this 
oblivion to the point of continuing a conversation 
with his secretary, and Shane, in no way abashed, 
drew up a chair at a proper angle to the big face 
and shoulders and proceeded with his sketch. Jed¬ 
burgh was about as hard to sketch as might have been 
some section of a totem pole, and just about as 
motionless. 

But his opening words caused Shane to prick up 
his ears, although it was not for a moment or two 
that he was able to remember just where he had 
heard the name of the individual discussed. 

“What d’ye know about this feller Don Quinto?” 
Jedburgh growled. 

“Not much about the man, Mr. Jedburgh, but 
what he claims for his property seems to be all right. 
The expert pronounced the quality of his hemp Ai. 
He’s not asking any help to run his hacienda. What 

53 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


he wants is for you to run a small motor railroad 
line for about eighty miles to the coast at Puerto, 
Mexico, and then buy a couple of little steamers to 
run between there and Port Arthur. His figures 
seem to show a big margin of profit.” 

Jedburgh rolled the big cigar between his lips. 
“Why does he pick on me?” 

“For the same reason as all the rest. Your repu¬ 
tation for being always ready and able to finance 
anything that promises a quick return at any time 
and in any place.” 

“Well,” said Jedburgh, a little reluctantly, “since 
you’ve sifted the feller down, I suppose I might as 
well talk to him. Pm leery about them greasers”— 
Jedburgh had never taken the trouble to improve his 
diction—“but Mexico ’ll be cornin’ along again pretty 
soon, and that part of it ain’t so bad, anyway. If 
you got nothin’ else to do, I wish you’d see that feller 
Clamart and find out what he wants. Know anything 
about him?” 

“All I know is that he doesn’t want any money. 
I’ve got a hunch, though, that he wants your help 
other than financial for some sort of a reform 
movement.” 

“Oh, to hell with that!” said Jedburgh. “This 
reform stuff makes me sick.” 

“Well,” said Olivant, “from what he said to me in 
the club the other day, it’s got something to do with 
reforming the reformers. I should say that he 
wanted your political backing to do something to the 
prohibition law.” 

“Then you can tell him it doesn’t interest me,” 
Jedburgh growled. “It’s all one to me if they repeal 
it or make it a capital offense to sell a quart.” He 

54 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tilted back his head. “I ain’t like most business men, 
John. I’m one of them fellers that finds he can 
make bigger money when the world’s all tail end to 
and anything’s apt to happen than when she’s run¬ 
ning like a clock. Well, ask him what he wants, 
anyhow.” 

“Ail right, sir,” Olivant answered, and rose. “By 
the way,” he added, as if in afterthought, “I suppose 
it’s nothing against Don Quinto from a business point 
of view, but he told me last night that if he 
succeeded in getting what he wanted with you, 
there’d be fifty thousand in it for me the day you 
broke ground. That shows he’s got some money, 
anyhow.” 

“It shows he’s a piker,” Jedburgh grunted. “I’ve 
slipped a man twice that on deal of half the amount. 
I know what that country’s like. The labor don’t 
cost him nothin’. Mostly peonage. All the same, 
it looks like the feller’s in earnest. Send him round.” 

This topic dismissed, their conversation turned to 
other things, principally some small steamships of 
which Jedburgh was considering the purchase at an 
astonishingly low figure. Then, just as Shane was 
finishing his sketch, Jedburgh said: 

“Look up this feller Clamart, too. See if you 
can’t get some sort of a line on him. Seems to me I 
remember that name in Paris or some’eres. See if 
the police have got any dope on him. I don’t see 
why he should want to pick on me.” 

Shane decided that it was time to leave. He 
showed his sketches to Mr. Jedburgh, who gave a 
grunt of approval, but declined the honor of signing 
one. He was not the man to distribute autographs. 
Shane thanked him for his courtesy [sic], then went 

55 




THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


down to the offices of his paper, where he left the 
sketches. 

He had some other work that occupied him early 
in the afternoon, and, this finished, he found himself 
in the grip of a considerable curiosity to learn what 
Clamart might have been up to. 

Shane decided to stroll down to Gramercy Park 
and ask him. On going out, he bought an evening 
paper in which the death of Colling was reported, 
though not as a murder. The man’s body had been 
discovered at about eight o’clock by a servant of the 
apartment, but until an autopsy could be performed 
and tests for poison made, no verdict would be 
rendered. Shane failed to discover any mention of 
Leontine’s name in connection with the affair. 

Clamart was at home and greeted him in an ab¬ 
stracted way. His mind appeared to be very full 
of something. Before they had exchanged any words 
there came from outside the window the creaking of 
a motor car’s brakes. Clamart looked out, then said 
to Shane: 

“Here’s Olivant. He phoned an hour or so ago 
to ask if he might see me. Will you do me a favor, 
Shane? I very much want you to listen in on our 
conversation.” 

“I’d rather not, Frank.” 

“You really must, Shane. It’s going to have a 
bearing on last night’s business.” 

“All the same, I’d rather not.” 

“Then will you consent when I tell you that it 
has also to do with the personal safety of a woman 
in whom you are very deeply interested?” 

“What’s that?” Shane gave him an angry, dis¬ 
believing look. 


56 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Yes, with Miss Cabot—that is, if she was the 
lady with you when you were attacked down there.” 

“But, good Lord! Frank-” 

“Sh!” Clamart lowered his voice as they heard 
the front door open. “She saw your assailant and 
that puts her in a very grave danger. Do as I say. 
I’ll explain later.” He drew the heavy portiere that 
separated the study from a bedroom. “Sit there by 
the door and listen.” 

Shane reluctantly obeyed, and a moment later 
heard Clamart greeting Olivant. 

“I suppose you’re kept pretty busy standing off 
demands on Mr. Jedburgh,” Clamart said. 

“Well, Mr. Clamart,” Olivant answered, “I 
haven’t really the least idea of what you want, and 
I’ve been told to find out. Please don’t consider me 
a barbed-wire entanglement around Mr. Jedburgh. 
He doesn’t need it. And there’s no swank about 
him. But he’s a ghastly busy man and I’m just one 
of the few detailed to make briefs of the proposi¬ 
tions coming to him.” 

“I’m very much honored that you should have 
taken the trouble to come to me.” 

Shane, listening under protest, caught the faintest 
shade of irony in Clamart’s even voice. It was plain 
enough that if Clamart had talked into some sort 
of truth machine, his speech would have come out 
at the other end something like this: “It is evident 
that my communication jogged Jedburgh’s interest 
enough for him to send you to look me over per¬ 
sonally.” Olivant seemed to hear it that way, for 
he said, pleasantly: “I can scarcely lay claim to that 
politeness. Mr. Jedburgh doesn’t go in much for 
diplomacy, you know.” 


57 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“Does that seem in order in my case?” Clamart 
asked. 

“Yes, I think so, Mr. Clamart. You see, we 
happen to know all about your past, and when a 
man with such a record as yours, even though he 
has since made his fortune honestly, addresses him¬ 
self to a capitalist like Mr. Jedburgh to ask his sup¬ 
port in an implied national uplift movement, why, 
then Mr. Jedburgh naturally feels curious to know a 
little more about this crusade and its originator.” 

“That’s good straight talk, Mr. Olivant. I ex¬ 
pected and wanted you to do that. I’d rather Rave 
you look up my record yourself than hear my 
version of it. You have found me with a clean bill 
of health, since the French Procureur de la Repub- 
lique ruled off my dossier for valuable services ren¬ 
dered, haven’t you?” 

“Why, yes,” said Olivant, “rather more than that. 
They seemed to think an awful lot of you, not only 
for having smashed the terrible Chu-Chu and his 
mob, but also for distinguished services rendered 
during the war. But to be frank, Mr. Clamart, Mr. 
Jedburgh’s point of view is not the more tempera¬ 
mental Gallic one.” 

“I understand,” Clamart said. “He holds to the 
safer theory—once a crook always a crook.” 

“That’s about the size of it,” Olivant said. “Mr. 
Jedburgh is the North Pole of all sentimental cur¬ 
rents of which ‘the sinner that repenteth’ theory is 
the South.” 

“I knew that.” 

“Then why have you approached Mr. Jedburgh, 
of all persons?” Olivant asked. 

“For several reasons. In the first place, my own 

58 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

fortune is insufficient to carry on a nation-wide propa¬ 
ganda for better citizenship and better manhood and 
womanhood, and the obedience to existing laws or 
else the official appeal or modification of them. Also, 
a campaign of education in regard to the danger 
which threatens this country from an influx and dis¬ 
tribution of narcotics.” 

Olivant raised his eyebrows. “Is that a theory of 
yours, or have you reason to know that it really 
threatens ?” 

“The latter. My proofs arc not yet conclusive, 
but the evidence I have is very strong. I have, also, 
good reason to believe that this traffic may requisition 
the services of a very formidable circle organized on 
a scientific and commercial basis to remove such 
individuals as may threaten to block it.” 

Olivant looked startled. “By violence?” 

“By assassination.” 

“Oh, come, Clamart.” 

“It’s already started. There have been attempts 
made on the lives of four of us already—five, actu¬ 
ally, though one of the individuals was not involved, 
except by happening to be around just then. The 
means employed are highly scientific; the application 
of an invisible poison in the nature of an ether more 
searching and deadly than any gas. I managed to 
stall it by being in a measure forewarned.” 

“Good Lord! man,” Olivant exclaimed, “that’s 
an attractive proposition to offer Mr. Jedburgh.” 

Clamart smiled. “I appreciate that. But I hap¬ 
pen to know a good deal about Mr. Jedburgh—just 
as he happens to know a good deal about me. Don’t 
make the mistake of thinking there’s any insinuation 
of blackmail, Olivant, because there’s not. There 

59 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

never would be from any quarter, so you can strike 
that out. What I know about him and his dealings 
and methods has merely given me an insight to his 
personality. I know that he doesn’t give a tinker’s 
dam about the welfare of humanity or what we 
understand of ethics or philanthropy. Unless there 
was some big, commercial profit to himself involved, 
he wouldn’t take the trouble to push a button and 
give an order that would make this country clean or 
unclean, healthy or diseased, at peace or war. Mind 
you, I don’t consider him a humanity hater, but 
neither is he concerned with its general welfare. First 
and last he is a business man; a calculating machine 
for money making. Have I got him right?” 

“Well, yes, in a sense. . . .” 

“In most senses, I think. And as the complete 
business man with no hampering altruism or con¬ 
scientious scruples, he understands fully the tremen¬ 
dous advantage of self-advertising. The things he 
does show that. He lives magnificently, travels and 
entertains like a prince, gives largely to organized 
charities, purchases political power safely with cash, 
all donations and endowments of a sort to give 
tremendous credit to any scheme that carries the 
indorsement of his name.” 

Olivant nodded. “That’s all legitimate, isn’t it?” 

“Of course it is. There are two ways of adver¬ 
tising; one to boom the enterprise, the other to 
boom the promoter of the enterprise. The latter is 
Jedburgh’s policy, because he takes up one thing after 
another so rapidly. He wisely spends the money on 
himself instead of making others associated with 
him a handsome present of its advertising value.” 

“Can you blame him for that?” Olivant asked. 

60 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“I’m not. On the contrary, I propose to further 
him in it with a minimum of cost to himself. Briefly, 
my offer is this: that he finance this propaganda of 
education that I have spent some months in com¬ 
piling under his own name and auspices and that he 
receive all the credit and advertising value of it. I’ll 
do all the work of bureau establishment and distribu¬ 
tion and enlisting membership pledged to render aid. 
Jedburgh pays the duly audited accounts and gets the 
name of national bulwark between rampant crimi¬ 
nality and good citizenship. He shan’t be bothered.” 

“It might bother him a bit to get assassinated,” 
Olivant suggested. 

“I’ve considered that. But once he set aside a 
fund for backing my plan I don’t think that there 
would be any danger of his getting assassinated, be¬ 
cause then his job would have been done. I and my 
active co-workers would be the ones that would have 
to watch our steps. And one of my reasons for pick¬ 
ing on Jedburgh was that I don’t believe there’s any 
scare to be got into the man at all. I shouldn’t ask 
anybody to do this thing without telling him what 
I’ve just told you, and that would be enough to 
frighten off most people. But not Julius Jedburgh. 
If he were to see good publicity going at a bargain 
and a sort that promised big returns, he wouldn’t 
take the trouble to snap his fingers at the danger. 
He wouldn’t even think about it.” 

“You’ve got him right there, at least, Clamart. 
But what I fail utterly to grasp is this—why do you 
want to do it?” 

Clamart smiled. “That’s the weak point, I’ll 
admit. If I were to try to tell you, neither you nor 
Jedburgh would believe me.” 

61 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

“I’m not so sure. May I guess?” 

Clamart nodded. 

“Love of a woman?” 

“No. Nothing approaching that.” 

“Conscience? Remorse and repentance for the 
past?” 

“No. My past is dead. I regret it, perhaps, but 
not violently. What I did then I felt justified in 
doing then. I thought that way. I was wrong, of 
course, but there hadn’t been anything in my life to 
tell me so in a convincing manner.” 

“Religion, then?” Olivant looked at him, curi¬ 
ously yet less doubtingly than at first. 

“I don’t think so, Olivant. ’Fraid I’ve got a hol¬ 
low where my bump of reverence ought to be. If 
it’s religion, then at least it’s not of any orthodoxy 
that I know about.” 

“Well, what the dickens is it, then? Suppose you 
tell me, and take a chance.” 

“Well, let’s call it nature, then. The reason that 
a wolf kills sheep and a sheep dog, the sublimation, 
or rather higher distillation, of wolves, kills them. 
But if a sheep-dog pup was to grow up with wolves 
he’d be the leader of the pack, if he were strong 
enough. I was like that. Started life as the left- 
handed son of a rich, well-born American who ran a 
double menage. He died without leaving any will 
that was ever found, and at the age of four I landed 
in an orphan asylum. One of the badly managed, 
old-fashioned kind. Same old story. I ran away 
and drifted into crime.” 

“We didn’t know that,” Olivant murmured. 

“I only tell you now to illustrate my parable. To 
finish it, just think of any good wolf-dog story that 

62 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

starts with puppyhood. I went through the wild 
phase, like these canine heroes, and then, like them, 
something happened to change my point of view and 
restore it to what it ought to have been. I don’t 
believe that the redeemed dog suffered any remorse 
from the past, and neither do I. Roughly put, that’s 
my answer to your question, Olivant.” 

“Thanks, Clamart. I understand. But I doubt if 
I could make Mr. Jedburgh believe it.” 

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t try! It would be a 
waste of time. I don’t care a darn what he thinks 
of me. All I want is that he should back my scheme 
for what he may consider it might be worth to him. 
I want his name as much as his money. You see, 
Olivant, there’s probably no man living better quali¬ 
fied to manage a movement like this than myself. 
I know the underworld and hate it. I started in 
to smash it and I want to keep on smashing it. I’d 
even like to dive in after it, like a shark-killing 
Kanaka with a knife. I suppose it satisfies some 
need in my nature. Don’t switch around and try 
to endow me with some admirable qualities I haven’t 
got. But on the other hand, don’t discredit me with 
criminal qualities I’ve sloughed off. Call this am¬ 
bitious effort of mine a return to my true nature and 
natural activities . . . like a well-fed mongoose kill¬ 
ing snakes. Not because of its passionate devotion 
to the family it’s adopted, but because its nature is 
to kill snakes.” He rose. 

“Well,” said Olivant, rising also, “your similes are 
apt, old chap, but, after all, you are neither a wolf 
dog nor a mongoose. I think I’ll give you a little 
better motive than you give yourself, if you don’t 
mind. But I’m afraid that Mr. Jedburgh won’t.” 

63 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“Don’t ask it of him. Just tell him, if you like, 
that here’s an exceptional chance to get a big bargain 
in advertising. I’ve got an awful lot of convincing 
material already written. It’s even interesting, I 
think. You see, I’m really an authority. I know 
the ins and outs of crime from personal experience. 
With the proper backing, I’m sure that I can wake 
this country up to some knowledge of the pretty 
awful danger that threatens it. And that’s not jazz 
and one-piece bathing suits.” 

Olivant laughed. “All right, Clamart. I’ll see 
what I can do.” And he went out. 


64 


CHAPTER V 


S HANE came, rather sulkily, from his listening 
post. “I don’t see your idea in getting me to 
eavesdrop, Frank. Nothing incriminating in all that 
powwow. Besides, it’s none of my business.” 

“I’m going to ask you to make it that, Shane. You 
really ought to, for a lot of reasons, the first of which 
is that in the last twenty-four hours there have been 
two attempts made on your life, and one on that of 
a lady in whom I judge you to be deeply interested.” 

“Well, admitting that, where do Jedburgh and 
Olivant look in? Olivant is a harmless sort of para¬ 
site, and you’ll never get that hard-boiled old totem 
of a Jedburgh to take any stock in you or in your 
national internal-defense movement.” 

“I’m afraid not,” Clamart agreed, cheerfully. 
“That isn’t what I was really after, though. I 
wanted to let Olivant know in detail just what my 
object is, and to convince him, if possible, of my 
own disinterested sincerity in that same effort.” 
“Why?” 

“Because I have reason to believe that Jedburgh 
is being guardedly approached by a man who pro¬ 
poses to flood this country with opium and needs his 
secret support. I wanted Olivant to know that they 
were up against myself if they undertook any such 
attempt. Jedburgh is the man to tackle a nefarious 
scheme like that, and to get away with it.” 

Shane thought of the conversation carried on so 

65 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

openly between Jedburgh and Olivant while he was 
sketching. “Is that man’s name Don Quinto?” 

“Why, yes ! What do you know about him?” 

“Jedburgh was asking Olivant that same question 
when I was sketching him this morning. All they 
evidently knew about him was that he had a big 
hacienda down in Yucatan and that he wanted Jed¬ 
burgh to finance the marketing of its produce. They 
mentioned hemp and cotton and henequen. Just 
after that Jedburgh spoke of you. He told Olivant 
to find out what you really wanted, and to look up 
your past record.” 

“Looks like association of ideas, doesn’t it? 
Speaking of Don Quinto, then of me.” 

“Yes, rather,” Shane admitted. “Of course Jed¬ 
burgh might not tell Olivant all he knew. But Oli¬ 
vant told Jedburgh that this same Don Quinto had 
offered him a fifty-thousand-dollar bribe to be paid 
him the day that Jedburgh took up his scheme.” 

“That young man is not the half-wit that you seem 
to think him.” 

“Perhaps you’re right, Frank. Then your object 
just now was to scare off Jedburgh from mixing in?” 

“Yes. Without letting him know that I was wise 
to Don Quinto’s actual scheme. He’s apt to guess 
that, though, if he doesn’t know it already. Don 
Quinto is here in New York, now. He approached 
Colling tentatively, and Colling made the same mis¬ 
take about my sincerity that Jedburgh is in danger of 
doing. I am very much inclined to believe—Clam- 
art’s tone was brittle—“that error cost him his life.” 

“These people thought he meant to blow their 
game?” 

“Not exactly. Get my help to hold them up. 

66 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Blackmail ’em to the limit. I think they trailed him 
here and then got me identified, not for what I am, 
but what I used to be. When Colling discovered 
that I was really in earnest about this thing and not 
holding out on him, he may have tried to get in on it. 
But they considered that he’d spilled the beans in 
coming to me, so they decided to get us both, and 
half succeeded,” he added, grimly. 

“But how about Miss Cabot and me?” Shane 
asked. 

“Well, you’ve been here quite a lot and Leontine 
and Miss Cabot have got fairly intimate. You 
didn’t just stumble over that killer down there on 
the beach. You were tagged for the scrap heap and 
he was assigned to you. He was on your trail. He 
had cut around ahead and was waiting for you in that 
cabin. Thought you might look into it, perhaps. 
There was that smell you and Leontine both men¬ 
tioned. Lucky you did. It started me thinking and 
saved our lives last night.” 

“But, darn it all, Frank, there’s not sufficient 
motive. . . 

“There is, though. It must be a thumping big 
scheme or they’d never go to Jedburgh with it. 
They’d know he wouldn’t listen to anything where 
his share couldn’t be shown him in the millions.” 

Shane looked his disbelief. “Where could they get 
so much opium? Not all from China, because its 
production is limited there.” 

“Not at all from China, Shane. From a whole lot 
nearer home. Right from Don Quinto’s hacienda 
in Yucatan, that’s only three days from Texas 
ports.” 

“But could he grow it there? Would he be let?” 

67 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Clamart laughed. “The Mexican government 
should worry about one of its feudal overlords mak¬ 
ing this country dopier than it is already in their 
direction. And I should say the Papavcr somnolif- 
erens would flourish there better than almost any¬ 
where else. Just under the tropic, rich soil, plenty 
of moisture, with dry weather at the time for incising 
the pods, letting the sap exude and dry overnight on 
the capsule. A hard shower during that time would 
be fatal to the harvest by washing it away. But 
they could time it right down there.” 

“Then you think this Don Quinto is planting it?” 

“I think he may have had five or six thousand 
acres under cultivation for the last two years. No 
doubt he turned his army of peons to work planting 
poppy in the maize and maguey and sizel fields. He 
could have imported a shipload of Chinese that 
understood the culture, and when they’d taught it to 
his peons he could have sent them across the Cam¬ 
peche Gulf and into Texas, charging them fer¬ 
riage at the amount owed them for their labor. It 
would all work out beautifully ... up to a certain 
point.” 

“Its distribution?’ 

“No. Creating a wide demand for it. Americans 
don’t want opium. More than that, they don’t want 
to want it. The infinitesimally small percentage of 
opium habitues would not constitute a market for the 
drug. And the rest of the population would decline 
to be taught . . . even to try it once for fun. Drugs 
are not compatible with the temperament of the 
American Commonwealth. Especially opium. There 
is the same dislike and distrust for it that our clean- 
minded compatriots feel for some of these bland, 

68 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

insidious Hindu rotters nosing about among our rest¬ 
less women for possible converts to some neurotic 
pseudo-religious cult. We have some few fools, of 
course, but they are pretty well absorbed in the 
national good sense.” 

“Then how create a demand?” Shane asked. 

“By disguising the true principle at first, just as 
they used to do in nostrums and quack medicines be¬ 
fore the law; sleeping draughts and soothing syrups 
and colic and cholera ‘cures’ and things. And in 
tobacco, preferably cigarettes. Or new ‘nonalcoholic’ 
beverages. I remember when the cotton and corn 
region were pretty well dosed up with such narcotic 
‘remedies,’ but there wasn’t opium enough and it was 
too high priced to do much damage. Of course, the 
state laboratories would soon discover what was go¬ 
ing on, so that they’d have to keep changing their 
vehicles. But the trouble is this, that few people can 
‘try’ a narcotic for a little while and then chuck it. 
One might as well try falling out of an airplane. 
Alcoholic people, even confirmed ones, can and do 
break off the use, and for good and all. Lots of 
them are doing it right now, and are considerably 
surprised to find that it really isn’t so hard when they 
have to. But about all narcotic specialists agree that 
such habitues can't and don’t. And while you can 
fool an alcoholic about what he is really getting, you 
can’t deceive the drug victim. The throes of pro¬ 
hibition enforcement will be over some day and the 
country come clean out of the liquor miasma. But 
this is a critical period in convalescence and one in 
which narcotic sedatives might prove terribly danger¬ 
ous. But just now, Shane, you and I have got some¬ 
thing a lot more fatal to grapple with.” 

69 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Hooray!” said Shane, dryly. “What sort of a 
bogy is that, Frank?” 

“The one we’ve just had a couple of whirls with. 
And it’s such a devilish one that I am going to drop 
this opium business flat and try a fall with its advance 
agents. For some time past I’ve had more than a 
hunch that there was something of the sort at work. 
Let’s call it a ‘murder syndicate.’ ” 

“That sounds businesslike.” 

“The word is exact. It’s just that, I believe. It 
looks like a commercial enterprise, though of what 
dimensions I haven’t any idea. Just now, I think, its 
services have been engaged by this Don Quinto out¬ 
fit, so that they are working together, like an old- 
time political ring and its hired poll-smashing, brick¬ 
throwing, sand-bagging corps of thugs. The object 
is to clean up obstacles like myself before going 
ahead. So my immediate efforts should be to take 
the offensive and try to clean up this mob of paid 
assassins before going ahead, just as they cleaned up 
the Isthmus before starting to dig.” 

“Some big order, isn’t it, Frank?” 

“No bigger than I once had and got away with. 
The methods now employed are more subtle and 
scientific, but one has got to keep abreast of the 
times, and we know what to guard against. Besides, 
I’ve found out about this thug that tried to kill you 
two down there. Ling Foo recognized your sketch. 
He says it’s a Mott Street gangster called ‘Leffy,’ 
drug peddler around the ‘roaring forties.’ ” 

“Seems to mix his activities,” Shane observed. 

Clamart nodded. “I’ve instructed Ling to shadow 
him these nights to find out where he goes. It’s not 
surprising that he should have been detailed to switch 

70 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

off your light. You trail around with the police and 
are chummy with the Broadway crowd, and seem 
to be in the know of whatever is going on. But you 
are known for a clean liver, and that, with your 
penchant for looking under the lid of this potpourri 
which is New York, is enough to lay you open to 
suspicion. Even without your coming here and being 
seen about with me.” 

“How about that carrier pigeon?” Shane asked. 

“I’m inclined to think that was fortuitous. Some 
bootlegger’s bird, perhaps. This Leffy wasn’t 
waiting for it, because the pigeon didn’t home in 
where he was. No, I think that Leffy had been on 
your trail and flanked you and was waiting there for 
a good chance at you. The pigeon furnished it. No 
need for poison down on a deserted beach, and, be¬ 
sides, it wouldn’t work in the open air. The stuff 
acts instantly or not at all. I took a tentative sniff 
in the room just after you had left, then went in. I 
got no reaction whatever. And there wasn’t any 
smell. That’s something else. The antidote, per¬ 
haps. Now, look here, Shane.” Clamart leaned 
forward with an intent expression in his steely eyes. 
“Are you going to see this thing through with me, or 
would you rather drop out? If the latter, you’ve 
got to leave the country. Your life is in very great 
danger. But no more than it was before you went 
down there. Leffy would scarcely expect you to be 
able to identify him in that sudden, startled glimpse 
you got of him. He doesn’t know your photo¬ 
graphic eye. But I sha’n’t insist upon your further 
exposure, Shane. You would be entirely justified in 
taking Miss Cabot away and not coming back for 
some months.” 


7i 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane frowned. “I’ll see it through, of course.” 

Clamart looked relieved. “Well, I’m glad of 
that. I never needed help before, but I do now. 
Ivan’s mob was a well-organized concern, but the 
game that’s going on right here makes any of our 
old ones look like pinochle.” 

“Do you think Miss Cabot is in very great dan¬ 
ger?” Shane asked. 

“No. This Leffy thought that he had killed you 
when he ran after her, and he wanted to make a 
thorough job of it. But you tell me that he got 
only within about fifty yards of her, and she was 
running away. No doubt Leffy thinks that neither 
of you could identify him. All the same, I’d advise 
her to go back to Boston.” 

“I shall, of course. How about Leontine?” 

“I don’t think she runs much danger as long as 
I’m alive.” 

Shane smiled. “It seems up to us to keep alive. 
Isn’t she apt to be investigated in connection with 
Colling’s death?” 

“No,” Clamart laughed. “That’s been managed 
rather well. I sent Ling Foo, dressed and looking 
like an Irish chauffeur, up to that apartment house. 
He told the elevator boy, Manuel, that he had a big 
deal on that would make him a lot of money. Manuel 
didn’t know Ling Foo from Adam, but one look at 
that Irish-Mongolian mug of his was enough. Ling 
Foo took him in the car to Don Quinto’s apartment, 
was shown in, and said to the Mexican, ‘Here’s a 
boy, senor, that knows more about high-life custom 
in your line than anyone in New York.’ Don Quinto 
was so astonished, I suppose, that he didn’t know 
quite what to say. Ling Foo slid out, leaving Manuel 

72 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


with him. Of course, if Manuel had known anything 
about Coding’s murder, he’d never have left the 
apartment house. But he must have interested Don 
Quinto enough to have been taken on in some capac¬ 
ity then and there. He’d got a boy to relieve the 
rest of his watch, so he didn’t go back to the apart¬ 
ment, and when he learned what had happened he 
didn’t dare go back at all. So, here’s Manuel, badly 
wanted by the police, and probably wished fast on to 
Don Quinto, who must be a bit upset about it, too. 
And the tremendous joke about it is that neither of 
them can have the slightest possible idea of who 
brought them together, though they must guess 
why.” 

Shane laughed. “Finesse. My word! Who’d 
ever have thought of that?” 

“It was Leontine’s idea. That sort of thing was 
her long suit and what made her Ivan’s chief of 
staff. Wit backed by audacity. Manuel can actually 
be of tremendous service to Don Quinto in a lot of 
ways, and Don Quinto would be quick to appreciate 
this fact and keep him on, the more so as he’s got 
such a blackmail on him. He’s the only person 
that can swear just where Manuel was after half 
past eleven that night. It wouldn’t help either 
of them much, all things considered. But Manuel 
is an ordinary-looking yellow boy, and not apt 
to be suspected in his capacity of Don Quinto’s 
valet.” 

“Where are they now?” Shane asked. 

“At Don Quinto’s hotel.” 

Shane left Clamart with the understanding that 
they were to keep closely in touch. As he went into 

73 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the street he noticed a man sitting on a bench in the 
little square opposite. His back was turned to Clam- 
art’s house. Gramercy Park, actually a square, is 
inclosed by a tall iron fence and reserved to the 
property owners of the houses facing it, the house¬ 
holders having their keys. Thus, a studious gentle¬ 
man, apparently engaged in reading peacefully, 
should have been the last person to excite suspicion. 
But what Clamart had said the night before about 
the roofs of the houses adjoining his being of about 
the same level had implied a suspicion of his neigh¬ 
bors, and it flashed across Shane’s mind that if, in¬ 
deed, some poisonous etheric substance had been 
dropped down the chimney, contained, possibly, in a 
capsule that would be melted by the heat, then access 
to the chimney must have been had over what must 
be in most cases that most unprotected part of a 
house, which is the roof. And this might be accom¬ 
plished without much difficulty by a tenant of some 
house adjoining. 

Therefore he looked closely at the solitary reader, 
observing that he had a professional aspect and 
wore a beard. At that moment Shane’s eye was 
caught by a flash from the open book that he was 
holding. 

Puzzled at the origin of this, Shane paused for a 
moment on the curb, drawing on his gloves and look¬ 
ing up and down the street as if for a taxi. In this 
brief moment he was able to discover at the lower 
corner of the book a square, shining object, evidently 
a pocket mirror. Then the man, without changing 
his position, turned a page and hid this from view. 
Shane walked round the square, entered the Players 
Club, of which he was a member, and, calling up 

74 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Clamart, told him of what he had seen, in guarded 
phraseology. 

“Yes,” came the answer. “I saw him just as 
you went out. He’s leaving. Where will you be 
to-night?” 

“I’m dining at the Duanes’,” Shane answered. 


75 


CHAPTER VI 


T HE dinner mentioned by Shane was in honor of 
the English wife of a Central European diplo¬ 
mat. This princess was known for an eccentric 
woman who, though of a family politically prominent 
in England, was of commoner origin. She had seen 
fit, on visiting America, to assume a pose of superi¬ 
ority, snub or patronize her entertainers or their 
guests. 

This pose, that might have been successful before 
the war, was now getting her not only extremely dis¬ 
liked, but even ridiculed by those who had expected 
to find it a distinguished pleasure to entertain her. 

Shane had heard in Washington some stories of 
her foolish behavior and felt rather interested to dis¬ 
cover for himself if she had actually the cheek to 
attempt her haughty imperialism of pose in so exclu¬ 
sive a house as the Duanes’. They were people 
accustomed in the past to receive the best graces of 
European nobility and royalty, and Mrs. Duane, a 
grande dame in her select circle, was a woman of 
too much pride, as well as wit and position, to take 
little nonsense of this sort. 

Quite aware of this, and for other reasons, Shane 
was astonished to discover that he was to take out 
Miss Sharon Jedburgh. He stared at the name on 
his dinner slip. There could be no mistake as to the 
identity of this young lady, as he had several times 
admired her portraits in different publications. He 
wondered now in what sort of stricture Emerson 

76 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Duane might find himself involved that his wife 
should invite the daughter of such a man as Julius 
Jedburgh to meet this princess. For to Shane there 
could be only such a reason for it. He knew nothing 
of Duane’s affairs, but immediately concluded that 
they must be considerably involved for him to have 
been driven to such an affiliation. It could only be 
a matter of business policy. Jedburgh’s name was 
too unusual and too conspicuous to escape unnoticed. 

He was presented to the princess, a stocky, young¬ 
ish woman, who gave him a fishy but not disapproving 
stare. Some few of the guests he already knew. He 
then found himself looking into a pair of big eyes, 
indescribable in color, of which the expression struck 
him as rather appealing. He decided that Jedburgh’s 
daughter was a little frightened and asking a support 
that Shane immediately determined she should have. 
Despite her beautiful gown, and its being to his eye 
absolutely and becomingly correct for a girl of twenty- 
two, perhaps, she gave the indefinable but unmistak¬ 
able impression of being out of place. Shane’s quick 
wit immediately analyzed the situation. Duane had 
positively demanded that his wife show some distinct 
social recognition of the Jedburghs. She had, no 
doubt rebelled, then, at his insistence, had, in a mo¬ 
ment of pique, invited Miss Jedburgh to this par¬ 
ticular dinner and washed her hands of what might 
happen. Nothing might happen, Shane thought, but 
there was always the risk. 

He, himself, was entirely in his milieu; of excellent 
family on both sides, well bred, well educated, of 
wide if cosmopolitan acquaintanceship, and known the 
country through for his cartoons, these often bitter 
and daring, due as much to his own feelings as to 

77 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the political sentiments of the publications that he 
served. He had reason to know, also, from sundry 
approaches made him from time to time, that he was 
considerably feared. He had been placed somewhat 
in the position of the famous Thomas Nast when 
attacking the “Tweed Ring” and Boss Tweed had 
said to him, with characteristic frankness: “Name 
your price. A good bulk of my constituents can’t 
read, but they can understand your pictures.” And 
like his famous predecessor of nearly half a 
century before, Shane had answered, “I am not for 
sale.” 

“I am so glad you are going to take me out,” said 
Sharon. ‘Tve always wanted to meet you. I feel 
now as I did once when crossing on one of father’s 
chartered ships during the war, and as we were 
dropping behind the convoy a determined-looking 
destroyer came slipping up out of the haze and stuck 
alongside us.” 

“You don’t need protection,” Shane said, “but all 
the same, it’s here. Nobody’s going to start anything 
with my dinner partner.” 

“I’ve heard such awful things about her,” Sharon 
muttered. “How do women get like that?” 

“Envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness,” 
Shane answered. “But she’s more apt to attack posi¬ 
tion than wealth and beauty. Her raw work is prin¬ 
cipally for those who dare look at her with level gaze. 
At the name of this princess all heads should bow, 
according to her peculiar form of egoism.” 

“Then I shall keep my eyes averted.” 

“Don’t do that. She might take it for aversion. 
But if you feel that you must, then please turn them 
my way.” 


78 


THE return of frank clamart 

“How long are you going to spare father?” she 
asked. “He’s a bidder for Mussel Shoals.” 

“I’ll back him up. Now that I’ve seen his best 
achievement, my respect for him is very great—and 
for myself less.” 

“Why that?” 

“Because I’m a cartoonist instead of a portrait 
painter.” 

His resonant voice, with its singular carrying 
power, had reached the ears of the princess in a little 
lull. Ignoring a remark addressed to her, she crossed 
to where they were standing and, without a glance 
at Sharon, said to Shane: 

“You’re a reporter, aren’t you? Seems to me I 
saw you on the wharf.” 

“I report in sketches mostly, Princess. Leave the 
writing up to the real talent of the staff.” 

She glanced at the red ribbon in his lapel. “What 
did you do in the war?” 

“I drew pictures of nuisances. Dangerous ones.” 

Her eyes turned to Sharon, through whom they 
seemed to look as if the girl were not there, as if 
they had expected to be arrested by something and, 
failing to find it, took a longer focus, then returned 
to Shane. 

“Artists interest me—any sort,” she said. “So 
do your reporters—they’ve got such colossal cheek. 
One of them was going to snapshot me in a bad pose. 
I said, ‘Wait,’ and he answered, ‘All right, sister; 
say when.’ ” 

“His idea of friendliness,” Shane said. “No doubt 
he’d worked on the lot of some motion-picture 
concern.” 

She gave her thick shoulders a little shrug. “One 

79 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

doesn’t mind cheek when it’s nation-wide. Are you 
going to do a sketch of me?” 

“I don’t believe so, Princess. My cartoons are 
mostly political.” 

He spoke a little shortly. His annoyance at her 
absolute disregard of Sharon was growing. “People 
very prominently in the public eye—statesmen and 
baseball players.” 

She frowned. “I don’t believe you know just 
who I am. My title doesn’t amount to anything. I 
think I’ll ask Mrs.—Mrs.—What is her name?— 

to let you take me out-” Her eye passed 

over the dinner guests, most of whom were stand¬ 
ing, and rested on Mrs. Duane with a purposeful 
expression. 

Shane felt a wave of anger and disgust. He knew 
that the woman was quite capable of offering this 
affront to her host and hostess and to put Sharon in 
a most humiliating position. He had no intention 
that he should be the cause, innocent or passive, of 
any such effort to show off. He was fond of the 
Duanes and had conceived an immediate liking and 
admiration for Sharon, whom, also, he had just 
promised to protect. And he held this foreign guest 
already in a good deal of contempt. He did not care 
two cents what she thought of him. 

He forestalled her attempt with cold finality. “I 
am afraid I shall have to decline that great honor, 
Princess. I should not wish our hostess—whose 
name, by the way, is Mrs. Duane—to think that I 
was trying to ‘hog the camera’—as your other re¬ 
porter might express it.” 

There was no mistaking the decision of his voice, 
no apology contained in its hard tone. The cold 

80 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

eyes of the princess gleamed at him with anger and 
astonishment, but she was clever enough to see that 
he meant what he said. She turned her back on him 
abruptly, stood in that position with as much em¬ 
phasis as possible. Shane, angry and disgusted, but 
showing no hint of what he felt, began to talk again 
to Sharon. The girl’s face looked distressed, but 
her eyes were glowing. 

“There is this advantage in being a reporter,” he 
said, in a tone that, while not loud, was vibrant 
enough to reach the ears of the princess. “One has 
access to the columns of the press throughout the 
country and to some extent abroad, so that one has 
often to use considerable self-restraint where one’s 
personal feeling is involved.” 

Sharon shot him a look in which fright at the au¬ 
dacity was mingled with a tremendous admiration. 
There was gratitude, also, and something else. A 
man far less observing than Shane must have seen 
that he had made an immediate conquest. It may 
be a very telling act to protect a girl from the villain 
of melodrama, rescue her from drowning or a burn¬ 
ing house, or shoulder the blame of her brother’s 
crime. But the chances are that a warmer feeling 
is evoked by just such a simple act as this, stepping 
into the breach through which a social humiliation 
threatens. 

The princess moved away. Sharon looked up 
again at Shane with shining eyes. “You’ve kept 
your promise,” she murmured. 

“Well, let’s hope it’s taught her something. These 
foreign snobs that think they can come over and wipe 
their feet on us need a jolt or two.” 

“She’ll try to get even.” 

81 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Oh no. She’ll assume I’m scum. Besides, I think 
she got my covert threat.” 

“I think you’re wonderful.” 

“Well, I’m not. Good Lord What do I care? 
I wouldn’t have you hurt for all the Almanac de 
Gotha” 

They went out to dinner then with a strict ob¬ 
servation for precedence that must have cost Mrs. 
Duane some considerable anxiety, as there were 
two Senators, a judge of the Supreme Court, a dis¬ 
tinguished French general and ambassador with his 
wife, and if anybody knows precisely the rules of 
precedence where such are concerned, it is by no 
means undisputed. 

Shane was in contact (to use a military term) on 
his other side with a French woman of title, between 
w'hom and Sharon he divided his attention impar¬ 
tially. He was wondering a little grimly all the time 
what this distinguished company would think if they 
knew what he did, that their most beautiful fellow 
guest, the girl at his side, was the daughter of a 
capitalist now tempted to deluge the country with 
opium; and he reflected with cynical amusement that 
probably the only person there who would not 
be dismayed by such knowledge was the guest of 
honor. 

Yet there was just this about it all—he thought. 
America’s friends were to be found only in her im¬ 
mediate family. Foreign nations, even those, or 
rather particularly those, who owed her a debt of 
gratitude, would be the first to rejoice at the earliest 
symptoms of her disease. No outside help could be 
counted upon at all. Foreign countries would grease 
the skids. Should the danger threaten principally 

82 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

from Mexico and the West Indies, they would shriek, 
“Hands off Mexico and the West Indies. Their 
assistance in suppressing the deadly traffic in nar¬ 
cotics would be of the sort rendered in the suppres¬ 
sion of contraband alcohol. An easy-going Uncle 
Sam had been lulled by the fanning of the vampire’s 
wing to sleep while he was bled. 

The dinner party was on the point of breaking up 
when Shane, who had been talking principally to the 
Senator’s and French diplomat’s wives, was told by 
a footman that he was wanted on the telephone. 
He excused himself and, on picking up the receiver, 
was not surprised to hear Clamart’s voice. 

“Can you meet in half an hour at that Greenwich 
Village cabaret, the Melting Pot?” 

“Yes. Anything wrong?” 

“L- and Miss C- are there and I think 

it’s imprudent.” 

“So do I,” said Shane, shortly. “You’d think 
they’d have better sense.” 

“Well, women are like that. I don’t think they 
ought to leave there unescorted.” 

“All right,” Shane answered. “I’ll be down as 
soon as I can break away.” 

He hung up the instrument, a good deal vexed at 
Cynthia’s imprudence, and even more at that of 
Leontine. This intimacy must be broken off imme¬ 
diately and Cynthia persuaded to return home. But 
there was a streak of stubbornness in Cynthia, Shane 
reflected, and it was not going to be easy to induce 
her to give up her new and interesting life and 
relinquish her work because of a danger, vague, if 
grave, that threatened her. She was like one of her 
Puritan ancestresses who, having established herself 

83 




THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


remotely in a region threatened by Indian attacks 
and dreading these, yet persistently remained there 
in a state of frightened stubbornness, v 

As Shane returned to the drawing-room, his eye 
caught that of the princess, who made a little ges¬ 
ture with her head, summoning him to her. Perhaps 
she may have decided that it was scarcely worth 
while to make an enemy of a man able to render her 
the benefit of a flattering publicity if he chose, and 
she may have learned from some one there of his 
potentialities. No doubt, also, there was something 
about him to attract her despite herself. 

As he stepped to her side, she said, not unpleas¬ 
antly: “You’re a bit of a bully, aren’t you? I 
rather like bullies.” 

“Not many women do, Princess, but they all need 
’em now and again. Especially the spoiled ones.” 

“Are you going to make a hideous picture of me 
for your paper?” 

“No, but I might have if you hadn’t made peace 
overtures.” 

“Then let’s disarm. It’s a relief to find a man 
that doesn’t have to bother with diplomacy.” 

“Journalists are the poison of that thing,” Shane 
said. 

Her eyes flickered at him with livelier interest. 
“Not bad, that. Rather wish I were one, myself. 
I get so sick of all this rot. Beastly country, this of 
yours. What does one do from this time on?” 

“Go virtuously to bed. If you can’t do that, go to 
bed as virtuously as you can.” 

She gave him a challenging look. “Even that 
gets tiresome. But these people are enough to drive 
one mad. They are all so smug and self-satisfied 

84 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


and polite and hospitable and tiresome, and, now 
that it’s almost time to leave, there’s nothing left.” 

“All dressed up and nowhere to go.” 

“There wouldn’t be that if one weren’t all dressed 
up, would there?” 

“It might be found,” Shane said. “I might find 
it for you, myself, if I weren’t promised to go 
directly from here to a moldy little hole of a cabaret 
where two very pretty women and one most uncom¬ 
monly interesting man are waiting for me.” 

“Take me,” she said. 

Shane could have laughed. Here seemed to be 
the very pith of humor of a sardonic sort. 

He had first seriously offended this guest of honor, 
and here she was, now, asking him to lead her into 
danger. It then flashed across his mind that this 
danger, if actually existing, might be negatived en¬ 
tirely with the Princess Karescu of the party. And 
with this brilliant idea came another, as often hap¬ 
pens. Why not consent to the princess’s request on 
condition that she ask Sharon Jedburgh to go with 
them. Such an arrangement would be killing two 
birds with one stone. It would erase the discourtesy 
shown Sharon by the princess early in the evening 
that must have caused the girl distress, and at the 
same time banish any stealthy attack that might be 
impending. It was to strengthen the guard, because, 
with Jedburgh the object of advances to finance their 
nefarious scheme, these vultures would scarcely try 
to strike at a group of which his daughter was a 
member. If any such attack was indeed contem¬ 
plated, they would be certain to have some watcher 
on the premises, in the cabaret as well as outside, 
and on discovering the identity of Shane’s guests, 

85 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the word would be promptly passed to abandon any 
attack. 

Shane did not believe that such a danger actually 
threatened. He thought that Clamart was merely 
exercising prudence, in which, of course, he was quite 
right. But aside from that, it would be amusing to 
make the princess show this attention to Sharon, 
and the girl would probably be delighted. It would 
redeem an evening apt otherwise to leave her hurt 
and unhappy. 

“Oh, come, don’t balk!” said the princess. “I 
don’t want to go home, and I’d like to see something 
amusing, after this stupid session.” 

“You don’t deserve to,” Shane answered, “after 
snubbing my dinner partner. We’re at war.” 

“Then let’s have a peace conference,” she sug¬ 
gested. 

“I’d want indemnity, saia Shane. 

“What sort? I’ll pay.” 

“Then, as a pourparler , what if you have a heart 
and invite my little partner to go with us?” 

“Julius Jedburgh’s daughter?” 

“Just that.” 

“You’ve got a beguin for her.” 

“No. But I’ve got one for her father.” 

“That’s different If it’s an ax to grind. A man 
like that comes in handy sometimes and they’re apt 
to be touchy about their daughters. But I can’t say 
that I fancy much being made the grindstone. There 
are some lines to be drawn even over here.” 

“Say, especially over here. That’s what you 
really think. But you’re entirely wrong. Aside from 
a very small coterie, Americans actually look upon a 
title as a sort of joke. It tickles them to exploit the 

86 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


holder of it a good deal as it might amuse them to 
kowtow before a victim of paresis who claimed that 
he was Napoleon or Julius Caesar.” 

The princess frowned. “How typically American!” 

“Absolutely. Another typically American trait is 
to get sore when this homage, whether sincere or 
not, is discourteously received. Then they’re apt to 
jump to the other extreme.” 

“So I’ve just discovered.” 

“Then let's call it a stalemate—unless you feel like 
accepting my terms for the sake of a little fun I 
can really be very nice when I’m rubbed the right 
way. I might even give you a party, where, whatever 
happened, I’ll guarantee you’d not be bored.” 

The princess was quick to weigh the value of this 
tentative bribe and to accept it. “Very well,” said 
she. “You're on.” She rose and crossed the room 
to where Sharon was talking to Mr. Duane. 

“Mr.—What’s his name?—has offered to take me 
to a cabaret of sorts,” she said to Sharon. “Don’t 
you want to come ?” 

Shane explained. “The princess wants to see our 
stab at a Latin Quarter and I’ve promised to join 
some people down there.” 

Sharon’s eyes shone. It must have been imme¬ 
diately obvious to her that her dinner partner had 
by some mysterious means coerced the guest of honor 
into showing her attention to efface a snub of earlier 
in the evening. Sharon was doubly delighted, less 
perhaps at being invited by the princess than being 
in Shane’s company for the rest of the evening. He 
had suddenly assumed for her the dimensions of an 
Olympian. A man who could dictate to this terror, 
come back and make her do his will after she had 

87 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


pointedly turned her back upon him and later told 
her hostess that she thought him scum, to which Mrs. 
Duane had replied with wit and spirit that there 
were different varieties of scum, one of which was 
cream. 

And here, now, was the impossible woman inviting 
Sharon to join them on a Bohemian party. Duane, 
also, looked pleased. Perhaps he was reflecting with 
elation on Jedburgh’s masked but actual satisfaction 
when he should learn that his daughter had spent 
the latter part of the evening with the princess, es¬ 
corted by the well-known cartoonist, Shane Emmet. 
Jedburgh took such honors as were thrust upon him¬ 
self for no more than they were worth, this always 
estimable in terms of dollars. But his daughter was 
a different matter, or at least Duane thought it might 
be a different matter. 

And so Shane led out his two magnificent charges, 
one the daughter of the man to win whose powerful 
backing the murder net had been cast, the other a 
woman who was in a social way the nation’s guest, 
though an uncomfortable one. Sharon suggested 
that they take her car, one big enough to live in, thus 
playing deeper into Shane’s hand. He gave the 
destination, then chuckled. 

“Share it,” said the princess. 

“Well,” said Shane, “I couldn’t help thinking of 
what you said early in the evening about reporters’ 
cheek. And I was wondering what you’d think if 
there’d be a row or something and you’d find yourself 
pinched.” 

“By whom?” 

“The police.” 

She shrugged. “Your police are the best-looking 

88 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


men I’ve seen over here. I don’t know that I’d so 
much mind if I were to be pinched by several that 
I’ve seen.” 

Sharon laughed, and in such pleasant relations they 
set oft for the Melting Pot where were waiting for 
them those two ex-archcriminals, Leontine and Frank 
the Clam, and the girl with whom Shane believed 
himself to be in love. 


/ 


89 


CHAPTER VII 


I T was nearly midnight when Julius Jedburgh’s big 
limousine with its choicely assorted freight drew 
up in front of the Melting Pot. Some sort of blind 
alley pierced in beside its dingy entrance. The psy¬ 
chology of whoever had arranged the cabaret was 
good. There was nothing about its front to dismay 
the slender purse, but ample means for its depletion 
lurked in what was behind, this interior attractive 
and equipped and furnished like a big studio. It is 
far better to pass from a shabby approach to a pleas¬ 
ing ensemble than the reverse, where the blatant 
promise of the portal is not sustained in tawdry, 
vulgar pretense. 

As Shane stepped from the car his first quick glance 
showed him a dark figure slouching against a wall of 
the alley, in the shadow of the single dimmed urn 
of light on which was painted in letters that showed 
dull and lurid, “Melting Pot.” In looked like Leffy, 
he thought. If so, this potential assassin must have 
been considerably astonished to hear the princess say, 
in her harsh but carrying voice, “Looks like a proper 
dive he’s brought us to, Miss Jedburgh,” and at 
Sharon’s laughing answer, “Let’s hope we get out 
alive, Princess Karescu.” 

They entered, when Shane immediately discovered 
Cynthia and Leontine at a table on the farther side 
of the big room, with Clamart, who was sitting 
negligently and facing a table at which was seated a 
bearded man in evening clothes. Leontine was smok- 

90 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

ing a cigarette. The music stopped as they entered, 
the dancers resuming their seats. In this momentary 
lull Shane made the presentation in a slightly lifted, 
resonant voice. As he was in the act of doing so a 
man who evidently had entered just behind him 
brushed past and seated himself at the next table but 
one, where the bearded man had apparently been 
awaiting him. Shane scarcely noticed this until a 
moment later, when, happening to glance in that 
direction, he observed that this newcomer also wore 
a closely trimmed Vandyke. 

Clamart shot a puzzled look at Shane. Cynthia 
was pale and seemed nervous and ill at ease. She 
greeted Shane coldly. He thought that Clamart 
must have warned her and Leontine of the danger 
and told them that Shane would soon arrive, further 
to safeguard them. And here, now, was Shane 
arrived, and bringing with him two striking and 
prominent women, at one of whom the whole room 
was staring. The identity of a celebrity spreads in 
such places by a sort of radio telepathy, but the 
princess was of distinct personality and her portrait 
had been published broadcast. The news of this 
distinguished guest was flashed to the orchestra, a 
Hungarian one and good, gypsy players, of course. 
There was some shuffling of scores, then the four 
pieces composed of zimballin, clarionet, violin, and 
harp swelled into some old Magyar folk song of 
welcome. 

“Rather nice, that,” said the princess, taking one 
of Leontine’s proffered Russian cigarettes. “What 
a jolly place!” She inhaled deeply and looked at 
Leontine. “Where do you get these? Tve hunted 
in vain for ’em.” 


9i 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane, who had seated himself between Cynthia 
and Sharon and facing Clamart, felt a foot pressed 
firmly on his own. All doubt as to its owner’s 
identity was immediately removed as it began to 
tap off dots and dashes in the Morse code. It took 
some doing for him to read the message while say¬ 
ing casually to Cynthia that there was safety in 
numbers. She gave him a poignant look, but the 
color began to return to her cheeks. 

A good deal of nimble-wittedness was immediately 
required by Clamart, also. He was conversing easily 
with the princess, watching the two bearded men, 
without appearing to do so, and at the same time 
tapping out to Shane, “Be ready for anything.” 
Shane shuffled his foot on top and answered, “Why?” 
then asked his guests their pleasure in the matter of 
refreshment. The waiter was whispering something 
about champagne that might be drunk with perfect 
safety out of beer glasses. Shane took a chance on 
health and ordered it and oysters, then signaled to 
Clamart to repeat. His brain had not the many 
facets simultaneously presented of this former subtle 
thief and present watchdog of the country’s weal. 
Clamart, assuring the princess with his most winning 
manner and perfect truth that Leontine (talking to 
Sharon) was an exiled Russian noblewoman who had 
rendered distinguished war service with the French 
and been decorated by them for it, managed at the 
same time and without error to rap out his warning 
to Shane, “Watch bearded men.” 

Sharon, delighted at finding herself with so in¬ 
teresting a group, was talking animatedly with Cyn¬ 
thia. But her eyes went constantly to Shane with that 
telltale inability to keep them long away from their 

92 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

dear objective that is a conspicuous symptom of a sud¬ 
den and intense attraction in the young. Older people 
have learned to school it better. 

The sudden infatuation of the girl was evident 
enough to Cynthia, but did not arouse her jealousy. 
She was used to seeing women fascinated by Shane on 
first meeting him. Cynthia knew precisely the effect 
of him. She had likened him in her mind to a magnet 
that, having drawn to it a piece of malleable iron, 
so overcharges it with its own essence that attraction 
ceases or there is a faint repelling current developed. 

Shane, Cynthia thought, was overcharged. Even 
those liking him best soon grew fatigued in his so¬ 
ciety. Also, he shocked his best friends a little by his 
absolute indifference to and sincere disbelief in dis¬ 
interested friendship. He was too self-sufficient for 
it, or for such love as Cynthia dreamed of. He w T as 
kind, but hard; could be devoted, but not tender; 
be sorry for a person in distress, but not distressed 
himself about it. Cynthia thought she knew the 
phase through which the young girl beside her was 
at that moment passing. She felt a little sorry for 
Sharon. She had immediately liked her. 

Shane, thus finding himself for a moment on a 
sort of mental “thank-you-ma’am,” turned a little in 
his chair as if taking opportunity to give the room a 
looking over. His glance, trained to this sort of 
thing by habit and by profession, swept the pair 
almost behind him like the quick special lens of a 
panoramic camera. 

But with this difference, that it slurred all other 
detail to concentrate on one of the two bearded 
men. He did, then, an extremely difficult thing, one 
practically impossible to any but such a lightning 

93 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

portraitist as himself. He visualized the face with¬ 
out its beard. More than the mechanics of sight was 
required to accomplish this. He had to supplement 
by imagination the features and expression actually 
observed. 

Then, reaching for the menu card, he turned it 
over and made a rapid sketch as if toying with his 
pencil. The waiter approached, when, turning again 
as if to see what he had brought, Shane photographed 
the other of the two with that discerning faculty of 
his. This one, too, he got beardless, so that even 
the waiter laying down the covers could not have 
recognized the object of his delineation. He folded 
the card and slipped it in his pocket. 

Another little respite in which Shane was amused, 
but not surprised, to observe an absolute change in 
the erstwhile sulky demeanor of the guest of honor. 
The princess had slipped out of her drab manner as 
if it had been the mask and domino of a court lady 
stealing from a tiresome audience chamber to join 
kindred souls in a clandestine revel. This was in¬ 
deed, perhaps, her case. She was enjoying herself. 
She had been immediately charmed by Leontine, and 
Clamart felt, perhaps, beneath their surfaces some 
poignant tension, the throb of some sort of passion, 
veiled but vibrant. The intolerance of her own na¬ 
ture for prosaic things responded to it. Leontine, as 
always in moments of stress, was in the acme of her 
beauty. Clamart had told her that at any moment 
something violent might happen. He had decided 
that both she and Cynthia must be warned. The 
agile mind of this ex-criminal to whom disguises had 
once been of almost daily habit, was quick to under¬ 
stand the reason for these beards, just as Shane had 

94 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

guessed it on discovering that they were real. Even 
in such a gathering of folk whose pretense was artis¬ 
tic, two bearded men are bound to be conspicuous. 
This had been a trick of the fearful Chu-Chu—to 
grow a beard before a meditated murder, not trust 
to a false appendage after it. A beard in the nature 
of things is slow to grow, but easy to remove, and in 
the matter of disguise the values of the change are 
equal. Both Clamart and Shane had arrived imme¬ 
diately at the same conclusion about these beards— 
that they had been grown for a definite purpose. 

The waiter served the “cider cup” from a pitcher. 
Shane, tasting it, decided that it was a fairly honest 
champagne. He began to give himself to a real 
enjoyment of the party. The conversation became 
more general. In lulls of the noise Clamart, speak¬ 
ing to Sharon across the table, emphasized her name 
in a voice that must have been audible to the suspected 
pair. Shane did not believe that there was anything 
more to fear. 

There came, then, a phase in which he found his 
quickness of mind sorely beset to maintain a running 
conversation about the table while at the same time 
keeping in touch with what he thought to be Clam- 
art’s unwarranted insistence that danger still hov¬ 
ered, and his code tappings on Shane’s foot. To 
distract him further was Cynthia’s vexation, ap¬ 
parent only to Shane, at his having evidently taken 
it for granted that she might be glad to meet the 
princess in this informal way, and as if she, Cynthia, 
were an habitue of the place that as a matter of fact 
she was visiting for the first time. Shane speedily 
found himself involved in some such maddening 
colloquy as this: 


95 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

The princess: “Extraordinary country, America. 
Such a hodgepodge of hospitality and censure and 
display and cheek.” 

Shane: “A genial desire to give the visitor a 
show at any cost. I once saw a cowboy lasso the 
stack of a passing freight engine for that same 
purpose.” 

Clamart ( tapping as he speaks ) : “Don’t order 
wine.” 

Cynthia (sotto voce) : “Don’t you think you might 
have brought them some other time?” 

Sharon ( also sotto voce to Shane) : She’s having 
a lovely time. Could you ever have imagined such a 
change ?” 

Shane ( trying desperately to read Clamart*s mes¬ 
sage, answer politely, and look composed) : “Things 
are in a jumble just now, Princess. Prohibition 
makes strange bedfellows. You’re apt to find some 
distinguished visitor who doesn’t know the ropes 
rubbing elbows in a key club with hopeless soaks who 
have decided to invest their last half-dollar in a drink 
and go without the bed.” ( In Cynthia’s ear) : 
“Don’t be cross. There’s a reason.” ( And leaning 
past Cynthia to Sharon) : “She’s uncoiling like a 
prickly porcupine. Must be fed up on polite parties.” 

Clamart ( turning from the princess to fasten 
Shane across the table with a meaning, level look) : 
“Good plan to keep one hand on your companion 
and the other on your pistol, nowadays.” 

He emphasized this with a look that was almost 
savage. It irritated Shane because it struck him as 
absurdly melodramatic. He began to wonder if 
Clamart might not have a tendency toward the quiet 
phase of melodrama, and, of the actual menace that 

96 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


undoubtedly did exist as a foundation, enjoy building 
up an extravagant structure of mystery and peril. 

As Shane saw their situation, it was merely this: 
There were two criminal gangs at work, one plan¬ 
ning to smuggle opium in great quantity, and the 
other engaged by them to smooth out the more 
difficult obstacles arising in their path. Clamart and 
himself were perhaps known to these people as war¬ 
time Secret Service agents who had worked together. 
More than that, Clamart was known to them as a 
dangerous renegade criminal at war with his former 
cult, a l*outrance, and working independently of the 
police. Clamart was, therefore, a bomb that might 
go off at any moment to wreck their machine unless 
promptly removed, while he, Shane, as Clamart’s 
friend and intimate, and, no doubt, still of the Secret 
Service (which he was not), equally dangerous to 
them in a different way. But there Shane believed 
their objective to end. Once Clamart and himself 
were suppressed, there was little to fear from Leon- 
tine and Cynthia. Shane thought that Clamart had 
done the worst thing possible in joining the two and 
getting him to do the same. He was angry about 
it, but considered that the presence of the princess 
and Sharon would nullify the danger for the 
moment. 

And here now was Clamart continuing to flash his 
stand-by signals as if some immediate attack were to 
be expected. Shane considered this to be extreme. 
No assassins, however desperate, would try to de¬ 
stroy a whole cabaretful of people for the sake of 
getting two, and these two forewarned. Besides, 
there had been no time in which to set such a trap, 
and they must now be aware that the daughter of 

97 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

the man whose support was most desired was of 
their party. 

Yet, in spite of this, Shane’s nervous tension 
steadily increased, inversely as the gayety of the 
party augmented. He wanted to leave the place and 
wondered at Clamart’s sitting there, talking ani¬ 
matedly with Leontine and the princess, while yet 
throwing from time to time these warnings toward 
himself. It then occurred to Shane that Clamart 
might be waiting for the two bearded men to leave. 
They were the closest objects of his suspicion, and 
Clamart was perhaps hoping that they might go out 
and pass the word to other members of the gang 
that the moment was not favorable for an attempt 
at violence. 

Shane looked across at Leontine. Up to this time 
he had observed her as a beautiful and gracious 
woman of unruffled repose of manner, slightly sub¬ 
dued and with a hint of melancholy that was not 
dreary, but sweet. She had preserved her calm even 
while reporting the discovery of Colling’s lifeless 
body, and had not betrayed the slightest agitation 
at the attack upon their own lives in Clamart’s study. 

But now she portrayed an astonishing change of 
both manner and appearance. The nervous tension 
had drawn something to the habitually unruffled sur¬ 
face of her to make her glow. It was as if the pres¬ 
ence of danger reacted as a stimulating elixir to 
quicken the pulses that in another person might have 
been enfeebled by it. The warm blood suffused her 
lovely features in a way to make them warm. It 
changed her aspect and vitalized the former serenity 
that was of a sort one might admire unmoved, as a 
statue. The contour of her features seemed actually 

98 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

to be changed, altered, and suffused with a nymph¬ 
like allure, so that there was a sort of reckless 
mischief where Shane had previously found a cool 
and classic immobility. He discovered that her for¬ 
mer accent of sober maturity was entirely one of 
expression, the kind of tonic reserve in which she was 
wont to hold herself. He could imagine her as a 
throbbing thing of passion, gloriously, recklessly, 
even wantonly displayed, and of a plasma that is the 
very essence of desirable woman. Something to 
rouse and fill the violent desire of a strong man and 
to appall a timid one, even though he be a woman 
lover. 

In curious contrast was Cynthia, who, though hold¬ 
ing herself bravely enough in what must have been 
tc her an ordeal, accomplished this by virtue of the 
pride and race in her. The difference was merely 
this, that Leontine, a danger habitue, craved this 
reagent as the narcotic user yearns for his drug. 
Her nature rushed to meet it like a bashi-bazouk. 
Cynthia would meet it with the courage of one of 
her Puritan pioneer ancestresses defending the door 
of her log cabin with an ax, turning to prayer between 
assaults. 

Shane, a much greater artist than even his clever 
work could ever indicate, indulged these observations 
critically because he did not actually believe that 
danger was there. He was more influenced by prec¬ 
edent than possibility. Such violence as Clamart 
insisted on anticipating did not occur under circum¬ 
stances like these. The times might be troubled, 
many outre crimes continually committed. A far 
too stringent law with its measures of enforcement 
on a free people still roiled by the topsy-turvydom 

99 


\ 

THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

of war, had, perhaps, resulted in a violent contempt 
of jurisdiction. Folk who attack some predominating 
ukase with fang and claw are apt to include others 
in their insurgency. But Shane did not believe that 
it had got to the point where such a party as this 
in a Bohemian cafe in the very heart of the country’s 
greatest city could sit in danger to their lives. That 
would be too bizarre, too insanely extreme. 

But he realized that the strain was telling on 
Cynthia, that hitherto tenderly sheltered girl. The 
rest might be enjoying it, but Cynthia was suffering. 
There is no pleasure in a deep-sea fishing party if 
one guest is in the throes of seasickness, at least to 
the kind-hearted. 

Shane suggested that they leave. Clamart shot 
him a negative look, and the princess, who from the 
moment of her arrival had shown the most unex¬ 
pected vivacity, raised her voice in protest. She 
was enjoying herself. There seemed no reason for 
her not having enjoyed herself at the Duanes,’ but 
this may have been perversity at feeling herself ex¬ 
ploited for the social prestige of a hostess who had 
actually no need of such. Whatever the reason, her 
manner had changed on coming there, with the 
abruptness of turning off the cold faucet of a shower 
and turning on the warm. 

Nearly all the patrons of the place were at that 
moment dancing. Shane, irritated and impatient, 
glanced at his watch, then leaned forward and said 
to the princess in a tone of finality: “I really think 
we had better go. These ladies have been sitting 
here all the evening and must be tired, and we ought 
to take Miss Jedburgh home.” 

The eyes of the princess hardened at what she 

ioo 






c < 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


chose to consider a presumptuous infringement on 
her prerogative of rank to give conge when she 
desired. 

“There’s no hurry-” 

Scarcely had the words left her lips when there 
came from near by a shock of a violent stamp upon 
the floor. And then, as if the concussion had jarred 
loose something in the electric wiring, the lights went 
suddenly and completely out and the room was 
plunged in utter darkness. 


IOI 



CHAPTER VIII 


T HERE are critical moments when the most 
elaborate preparedness becomes a hindrance 
rather than a help. To many alert minds, instinct, 
reflex action, are swifter than a rehearsed line of 
conduct that emergency serves only to clog. 

Shane’s mind was of this sort. There is a price 
to quick-wittedness, just as there is to any rare and 
valuable faculty. If while speeding down a slope 
in his car another were to emerge from a blind lane, 
it is certain that he would have instinctively done the 
proper thing, whether in accelerating to speed ahead, 
swerve in front or behind, or take a chance and skid 
around. But if he had been previously warned that 
just such a thing was due to happen and what he was 
to do, it is very possible that at the crucial instant he 
might have bungled it. 

Clamart’s mind was of this sort only in part. It 
worked swiftly and reflexly, but it was no more to 
be disturbed by waiting, by anticipation of the lupine 
spring, than that of a starved, stalking timber wolf. 
Temperamentally the two men were very much alike, 
and for that very reason might not have made so 
capable a working couple but for the wealth of ex¬ 
perience that put Clamart in the role of teacher. He 
had been absolutely prepared for precisely what was 
to happen. He believed that the lights would go 
out and that the pair of killers, having accurately 
located their prey, would then spring in, strike, 
probably with knife, spring out again, and escape 

102 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

before the current was restored. Clamart had 
counted on this method because it was the one par 
excellence that he would himself have employed had, 
for instance, Chu-Chu been at that table. It would 
not be difficult to gain access to the main switch of 
the current that lighted the building. When Shane 
had entered with the princess and Sharon and their 
names had been immediately circulated, Clamart 
thought just as Shane had counted—that there was 
no further danger of attack. But the two men had 
not moved nor made any attempt to communicate 
with the confederates that must be outside. More¬ 
over, they had struck Clamart as being engaged in 
heated argument, in disagreement about something. 
Clamart, watching them covertly, thought it possible 
that they might not know the motive of their com¬ 
mission to kill, and as merely hired assassins they 
disliked the job of tackling so large a party and one 
composed of such distinguished people. It might be 
that they knew nothing about Jedburgh’s importance 
to their client. All things considered, Clamart 
thought it about an even bet whether they would 
make any murderous assault in the place or not. The 
hazard did not worry him. Fie did not believe that 
there was the slightest possibility of their using fire¬ 
arms. The chances of missing in the dark were too 
great, while the using of a torch to illumine their 
target might lead subsequently to their identifica¬ 
tion as the murderers. It would be knife work 
if it came at all, Clamart thought—a spring at Shane 
by one of the men and at himself by the other, a few 
quick thrusts, and an exit through front or rear be¬ 
fore the lights could be turned on again or it was 
even discovered that Death had been lurking in their 

103 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 


midst and the screams those of mortal anguish. Shots 
would precipitate the alarm and pursuit. Knife work 
would be more sure and give more time. 

It may be wondered then that Clamart, weighing 
the situation thus, should have waited for attack and 
exposed the women. There were several reasons for 
his doing so, the greatest of which, perhaps, was his 
singular one-ideaedness. He had set himself to do 
a certain thing, and his nature was of a sort never 
to withdraw from what he undertook, no matter what 
the danger to himself or others, if he considered the 
object to be attained sufficiently important. In the 
present case he felt this to be tremendously impor¬ 
tant. He was convinced of the existence of a purely 
commercial murder syndicate, and he was determined 
to uncover it. 

Then, he considered that Leontine, Shane, and 
himself had deliberately taken hands in this life-and- 
death game. If police assistance were to be sum¬ 
moned, it must lead to the disclosure of the past 
activities of Leontine and himself and render further 
efforts on their part useless. Cynthia had been 
drawn into it fortuitously, but she was now involved, 
and Clamart considered her danger actually less in 
the present situation than in subsequently going un¬ 
protected about her affairs. As for the princess and 
Sharon, there was, that he could see, no object in 
their assassination and no great danger to them 
except the possibility of being mistaken in the 
dark. 

But above all these other factors, the weight that 
drew down the balance in his determination to see 
the business through, whatever happened, was him¬ 
self. He trusted to his proven speed of mind and 

104 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


body. In his violent past he had never waited for 
attack, never taken the defensive. He attacked. He 
was like a sprinter who wins to the tape not only by 
virtue of his speed, but because of his ability to 
“beat the pistol.” His reflexes were swifter than 
those of any person he had ever encountered. He 
could strike before the slower impulse of his adver¬ 
sary had innervated the group of muscles required 
to achieve the fatal gesture. 

Sitting there outwardly calm, inwardly tense and 
tingling, he was as well organized for action as a cat 
drowsing near a rat hole, fibers relaxed, but ready 
for quick tetanic contraction; eyes alert and watch¬ 
ful through the slits of narrowed lids. His feet and 
legs were clear of any impediment. He figured that 
at the slightest overt symptom he could reach that 
pair and put them hors de combat before their knees 
had straightened. He thought that Shane would 
give him sufficiently rapid support, warned as he had 
been. But he was nevertheless annoyed at his con¬ 
frere’s evident refusal to appreciate the potentiality 
of danger. Shane counted too much on the baffling 
influence of these two guests that he had managed 
so cleverly to bring. Clamart never counted on such 
fortuitous support. First and last, he counted on 
himself. 

One may, therefore, understand that if some trust¬ 
worthy intelligence had, five seconds before the lights 
went out, whispered, “Now,” in Clamart’s ear he 
could not possibly have been more ready. From 
where he sat, the table between him and the two 
bearded men offered no obstacle, as it was placed out 
a little and its occupants were dancing. 

So it happened that the image of his objective had 

105 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

scarcely dimmed in Clamart’s vision when he sprang. 
Ic was not the leap of a wolf or jaguar, but more like 
the swift, stealthy gliding rush of a weasel or ferret, 
a sort of protracted uncoiling, like loosing the end 
of a spring. 

As for Shane, nothing could have convinced him 
that he was not himself on his feet and in purposeful 
motion simultaneous to the darkening of the room, 
and yet, as time counts in such crises, his defensive 
movement, or rather protective one, was" infinitely 
behind Clamart’s swift offensive. 

Shane had sprung to his feet in a slightly crouch¬ 
ing attitude, with his arms thrust out and to the sides, 
his object not to protect himself, but to block any 
attack directed toward Cynthia and Sharon. To do 
this more effectually he had slid half a pace sideways 
from his chair farther out into the room, and scarcely 
had he done so when something struck against the 
back of his hand sharply and painfully, with a sting¬ 
ing across the knuckles. No doubt his shifting of 
position had left his hand in the space occupied by his 
body a second or two before. He struck out violently 
with his other fist, but in the black and empty air, 
and before he could strike again an invisible body 
brushed past him. Shane whipped up his chair and 
flailed about with it immediately in front of him, but 
the effort was futile so far as the encountering of any 
object was concerned. 

The place was immediately in an uproar. The 
crash of an adjoining table with its glass and china- 
ware had aroused alarm for what otherwise might 
have been regarded as an ill-advised but purposeful 
prank. It is an old trick of certain institutions of 
the sort to flick off the lights for a few seconds, then 

106 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


switch them on, to the amusement of the patrons at 
the tableau presented. 

But such tricks are no longer played; they would 
be criminally stupid in an epoch of crime and 
violence of every sort. 

The women thought of their jewels, the men of 
a raid of which the management had been warned 
at the eleventh hour on the entry of the raiders, and 
plunged the place in darkness to give time for the 
disposing of contraband. Shrieks rang out with 
hoarse, angry cries. The music stopped in an un¬ 
certain way, like a motor that turns a few times in 
momentum after the current is cut off. Then pocket 
torches began to flash and matches to flare. The 
place was dimly lighted by innumerable tiny flames 
of these latter, people lighting fresh ones as the 
former were extinguished. Those dancing had stood 
still, those sitting had sprung to their feet. Angry 
voices were crying: “Lights! Lights!’’ Shane de¬ 
sisted from the blind defense of his swinging chair 
and glanced about. His eyes fell first on Clamart, 
seen dimly in the flickering light, sitting as he 
had seen him last, but breathing deeply. Cyn¬ 
thia tottered against his side. Shane threw his 
arm about her and eased her to her seat, then 
looked past her for Sharon. But the girl had dis¬ 
appeared. 

“Where’s Miss Jedburgh?’’ he asked, in a quick, 
harsh voice. 

Clamart sprang to his feet. He had been look¬ 
ing toward the table where the two bearded men 

had sat. “Miss Jedburgh-’’ he echoed, then 

glanced across the table, under it, and tried to pierce 
the semidarkness of the room. The princess was 

107 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


leaning forward, her knuckles on the table, eyes 
wide with astonishment rather than fear. 

Clamart whipped out a pocket torch and turned it 
variously about. Shane, catching a glimpse of his 
face, saw that it had suddenly grown terrible. He 
glanced instinctively toward the wreck of the table 
where the two men had sat. It was overturned, 
the things upon it littering the floor. Then, as some 
ray of light whipped in its direction, he saw the 
head and shoulders of a man lying face downward 
in a widening pool of blood. 

Shane next discovered that his hand was bleeding 
freely from a slash across the knuckles, an incised 
wound where the edge of a knife had slipped along 
as its point was driven forward. He whipped a 
napkin tightly around it. 

“Where’s Miss Jedburgh?” he repeated. 

Clamart rushed across the room and out of the 
door. He was met by two policemen coming in. 

“Have you seen a young lady go out?” he de¬ 
manded. 

“Naw,” answered one of them roughly. “Get 
back in there.” 

Clamart obeyed. He was baffled, bewildered, at 
a loss to explain the disappearance of the girl. Nor 
had he seen any sign of the other bearded man. He 
returned to the table. Meeting Shane’s anguished 
eyes, he shook his head. 

Then all at once the lights went on again, to dis¬ 
close no great disorder beyond that of the capsized 
table and the dead man half under it. The police 
began taking their notes of this mortality. The 
frightened patrons were curtly ordered to resume 
their places at their tables until given permission to 

108 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

leave. The patrol wagon arrived, waiters were 
lined up and put through a brief questioning by a 
gray-haired chief with a military air. Their testi¬ 
mony immediately disclosed the fact that two 
bearded men had been sitting at that table quietly 
enough; that when, for some reason of which the 
management protested ignorance, the lights went 
out there had been a crash, a brief scuffle, and that 
one of the men had disappeared. The inference was 
obvious—one of them had evidently profited by the 
sudden extinction of the lights to stab his companion 
and escape. 

Shane, pallid and quivering, stepped forward and 
offered his hand for inspection. “That man ran into 
me, and when I grabbed at him slashed at me with 
a knife. But for God’s sake, let this business wait! 
A young lady of our party has disappeared. She is 
Miss Sharon Jedburgh, Julius Jedburgh’s daughter.” 

This information produced its immediate effect. 
“She must have been frightened and ran out,” the 
chief suggested. He took the names of the party, 
raised his bushy eyebrows at that of Princess Kar- 
escu, but he noted indifferently those of the others 
until Shane gave him his. Then his face lighted 
with recognition, not only of the name, but of the 
man himself. 

“Oh yes,” he said, “I’ve seen you in court, Mr. 
Emmet. Now what’s this about Miss Jedburgh?” 

Shane told him rapidly of how he had brought the 
two ladies from the Duanes’ dinner party. “She 
was beside me when the lights went out,” said he. 

Cynthia and the princess testified the same. In 
the confusion and excitement neither had noticed 
Sharon’s withdrawal. The chief hurriedly dis- 

109 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


patched some of his men to look for her. “She can’t 
be far,” he said. “Might have run out and got in 
her car.” 

“But it was pitch dark,” Shane objected. 

The doorman was questioned. He said that not 
one, but several people, both men and women, had 
rushed out. He had made no effort to prevent 
their going. In the darkness he could distinguish 
none of them, but thought one of the women was 
hysterical. 

The guests of the place were then allowed to 
leave. The gruesome affair appeared to be simple 
enough—a murder perpetrated in the darkness for 
reasons unknown. Shane’s party was very briefly 
questioned. None of them had particularly noticed 
this pair. They had all sprung up at the crash, but 
none had left their places. They were merely asked 
where they might be found to identify the murderer 
if caught. 

The princess was disposed to make light of the 
affair. “She merely got panicky and bolted for 
the door,” was the opinion of the guest of honor. 
“Who’d harm her?” 

“But the chauffeur hasn’t seen her,” Shane 
groaned. 

Clamart, who had sat grim and silent, suggested 
that they leave. He drew Shane aside. “We fluked 
it,” he said. “There were two parties—maybe more. 
Sharon started for the door and was grabbed by 
somebody inside or out. Your man might have run 
into her and taken advantage of her being rattled 
or—or-” 

“Say it out,” groaned Shane. 

“Knifed her, thinking it was Cynthia, and carried 


no 




THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


her out and put her in a taxi,” said Clamart, in¬ 
exorably. “Why didn’t you kill him?” 

“Why didn’t I?” Shane almost snarled. “Be¬ 
cause it came too quick, but I did manage to fend him 
off.” His tormented face hardened. “Nice question 
for you to ask, Clamart. What did you do?” 

“I killed mine,” said Clamart, wearily. “He’s the 
man that’s been watching my house from the bench 
in Gramercy Park. Let’s go.” 


hi 


CHAPTER IX 


C LAMART went with Leontine and Cynthia. 

Shane took the princess to her hotel in the Jed¬ 
burgh car. On the way he was forced to listen with 
agony to the princess’s enthusiastic appreciation of 
the party, and she, discovering his torment of mind 
and knowing nothing of its deeper cause, made light 
of it. 

“Don’t be in such a stew, my dear man. Nothing 
could have happened to her.” 

“But, good God! Princess, she wouldn’t bolt off 
without a word to any of us.” 

“No telling what a rattled girl will do. She might 
have run out and got turned about, then decided to 
go quietly home. As one of those bobbies said, some¬ 
body may have given her a lift, thought the place 
was being raided.” 

All of this, of course, was nonsense to Shane. He 
dropped the princess, a little piqued, then told the 
chauffeur to go to the Jedburgh house. Nearly 
there they overtook another car that drew up in front 
of the house just ahead of them. A compactly built 
man in evening dress got out of it and crossed the 
sidewalk. Shane recognized the heavy figure of 
Julius Jedburgh. He leaped out and overtook him 
at his door. 

“Mr. Jedburgh.” 

“Huh?” Jedburgh swung about quickly for his 
bulk, like a boar. 

“I’m Shane Emmet-” 


112 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Well, what’s the trouble?” 

“Let’s get in quick and find out if your daughter’s 
got here.” 

Jedburgh stared, opened his mouth; the half- 
smoked cigar fell unheeded on the stoop. “What’s 
that, young feller?” 

“Oh, go in! Let’s see if she’s here!” 

The door was swung open at this moment by a 
sleepy footman. “Has my darter come in?” Jed¬ 
burgh demanded. 

“Not yet, sir.” 

“Sure?” 

“I’ve been right here, sir. Seen nothing of Miss 
Jedburgh or the car, sir.” 

“Go up to her room and make sure,” said Shane. 

Jedburgh looked at him with a frown. “Come 
back here,” he said, and led the way to the library 
in the rear of the house, flung off his coat, and 
motioned Shane to a chair. 

“Now what’s up?” he demanded. 

Shane described with rapid brevity his meeting 
with Sharon at the Duanes’, his telling the princess of 
his engagement to meet three friends later at the 
Melting Pot, her request that he take her with him, 
and her invitation to Sharon to be of the party. At 
this point Jedburgh interrupted him. “What did 
she want of Sharon?” 

“She seemed to take a fancy to her,” Shane an¬ 
swered. “Might have preferred three of us for the 
look of it.” 

He continued his account, told of their joining 
three of his friends, and on mention of the names 
again was interrupted. 

“That Clamart feller-” 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“Yes. I knew him in France before the war and 
during it. We were both in the French Secret 
Service.” 

“Huh!” This was noncommittal. 

Shane continued his narrative, his description no 
more than that, as all that might have been evident 
to anybody there but Clamart, Leontine, Cynthia, 
and himself. As he told of the sudden extinction of 
the light, the fracas at the table close by, the man 
colliding with him, at mention of which he took his 
bandaged hand from his pocket and showed it, Jed¬ 
burgh began to breathe heavily. Then, at his con¬ 
clusion—“your daughter had disappeared”—Jed¬ 
burgh’s heavy features grew suddenly flaccid for a 
moment before becoming engorged with blood. 

Without moving a muscle he swore a lurid oath, 
and, “Kidnaped, by God!” 

“But how and—why?” Shane almost wailed. 

Jedburgh pressed a button. The footman, who 
had, almost as Shane started his narrative, come to 
say there was no sign of Miss Jedburgh, reappeared. 

“Wake up Olivant and tell him to come here—in 
a hurry,” Jedburgh said. He shoved a humidor of 
cigars to Shane, took one himself, lighted it, and 
stared at the younger man. The heavy, imperturba¬ 
ble face had not changed a shade of its expression or 
lack of it during Shane’s recital. The artist was 
reminded of a heathen idol, or of a thick-bodied 
spider, or of a clock. Jedburgh evidently was one 
who ticked away without a change of face. If he 
noticed Shane’s most evident anguish of mind he 
gave no sign of it. The affair evidently was being 
turned through the perfectly working brain as might 
be any other problem, methodically and without emo- 

114 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tion. It was being milled, shaped, stamped, like a 
piece of sheet iron fed into a complicated machine, 
to come out a finished product, a tin can duly rounded, 
soldered and labeled, or the hood of a motor. 

This mental process proceeded in silence, punctu¬ 
ated only by the reddening at the tip of the cigar and 
a rapidly lengthening ash. This was rhythmic, like 
the swing of the pendulum of a grandfather’s clock. 
Time might have been computed by it. Jedburgh’s 
eyes, a curious rusty-iron color with a rim of gray 
that was not arcus senilis, remained fastened on 
the silver top of the humidor, as though courting 
hypnosis. 

Shane sagged down in his chair and waited. Jed¬ 
burgh appeared to have forgotten his presence, his 
existence. He had not so much as suggested that he 
cleanse his wound. Shane had done this abstractly 
at the Melting Pot, when the first police examina¬ 
tion was going on. Shane now reflected bitterly on 
the vanity of human plannings, the fatuity of clever¬ 
ness. He had invited Sharon to protect the rest of 
them, and failed in his protection of Sharon. He 
did not wonder what Jedburgh might presently say 
to him anent this dismal failure. He was not in¬ 
terested in what Jedburgh might say about himself, 
only what hypothesis he might advance about His 
daughter’s disappearance. 

The metronomic process of Jedburgh’s thought 
was broken by the entrance of Olivant, in gown and 
slippers and his hair brushed. The young man 
glanced with mild surprise at Shane, nodded, and 
sat down comfortably, glancing as if from force of 
habit at his nails. Jedburgh came out of his trance, 
rolled the fat cigar to the other side of his mouth, 

ii5 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

and said to Shane, “Tell this feller what you just 
told me.” 

Shane expelled the residual air from his lungs, 
took a fresh breath, and repeated his narrative with 
exactness, almost word for word. He made no addi¬ 
tions or deletions. It struck him that Jedburgh was 
putting him through a sort of test of accuracy, com¬ 
paring the two copies, as one might say. Olivant 
listened much as Jedburgh had done. He copied his 
benefactor in many ways, but had, besides, a natural 
gift for concealing his emotions. The difference was 
that Jedburgh gave the impression of having none 
to conceal. 

Shane finished with no appendix of apology. None 
seemed, in fact, to be in order. Jedburgh nodded, 
then looked at Olivant. “Well-” he growled. 

Olivant looked at his nails. “Such joints are the 
rendezvous of crooks more or less keyed up with 
different kinds of dope. Sharon’s face has been pub¬ 
lished a good deal, and she drives her own car up _ 
and down Fifth Avenue. Some prowler or prowlers 
scouting for a job recognized her and thought 
‘What if I could steal that girl, then ask about a 
million ransom for her?’ Then the lights went out 
and the chance offered. Opportunism.” 

Jedburgh looked at Shane. “What’s your idea?” 

“Olivant’s sounds as good as any other,” Shane 
muttered. 

“Well, it don’t to me,” Jedburgh growled. 
“Things don’t happen like that. Folks don’t think 
quick enough. This job was framed.” He glared 
at Shane. “Premeditated.” 

Shane’s guilty conscience thought it felt a covert 
accusation. Olivant thought so, too, and looked at 

116 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane with a quick suspicion that faded instantly. 
Shane was past the danger of a change of counte¬ 
nance. Clamart’s words, “knifed her, thinking it was 
Cynthia,” had devitalized him. If this theory were 
true, he did not want to live. If he had taken that 
lovely girl to that place through such a motive as he 
had, and her life had paid the price of it, then Shane 
could never know a single moment of peace, no mat¬ 
ter what blessings were to be vouchsafed him. Even 
now his soul felt dead. 

Jedburgh’s next words came, therefore, as an as¬ 
tonishing revivant. “They cooked it up to steal my 
goat. They think they got me where they want me, 
now. It ain’t for any million-dollar ransom. It’s a 
bigger job than that.” 

Shane’s drooping petals revived a little, but not 
much. Olivant discovered a microscopic blemish on 
a nail and removed it with a silver cigar cutter. He 
nodded almost imperceptibly. Shane asked, in a 
voice too lifeless to be doubting, “How could they 
know what was going to happen?” 

“Oh, hell! Use your thinker. They made it 
happen. They follered her from the time she left 
here to go to the Duanes’, a little further down the 
avenue. They hung round, seein’ her drive there 
with only the shoffer. I never thought of her not 
cornin’ straight home after the party. Only five 
blocks. They follered the three of you to that dump. 
They got a feller to turn off the lights. She might ’a' 
jumped back or somethin’ when she heard you and 
the feller scufflin’, or broke for the door. Most girls 
would. Then they nabbed her.” He leaned back, 
and the pulmotor suction of his cigar began again. 

Shane’s pulse began to beat more strongly. It 

1 17 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


cleared his head, refreshed mental faculties sunk 
into the apathy of despair. Jedburgh seemed so 
sure. His cigar now traveled back to the other ex¬ 
tremity of his straight but thick-lipped mouth. 
“Sounds all of a piece to me, the lights out and the 
killin’ and rushin’ off my darter.” 

“The killing?” Shane exclaimed. “Why the 
killing?” 

“Well, why not?” Jedburgh demanded. “Make a 
diversion, wouldn’t it? Distract attention from 
Sharon. Give ’em time to rush her off. D’ye think 
they’d stick at knifin’ a stray bum or two to back a 
play like that? Any gang that’s got the nerve to 
kidnap Julius Jedburgh’s darter ain’t goin’ to stop 
at any such trifle. Didn’t the feller make a lunge 
at you, too? Look at it from their slant. What if 
the lights had gone on and nothin’ happened but 
Sharon missing? Or you’d missed her even before 
they went on. You’d have dug out after her, raised 
a hell of a row, got the police right on the job. But 
no. Here’s a dead man on the floor. You’re all 
held to give your names and what you know about the 
business. By the time you beat it in their heads that 
one of your party’s disappeared they’ve made their 
getaway.” He spat out his badly mangled perfecto. 
Jedburgh smoked half a cigar and ate the other half, 
or seemed to. 

Shane’s head began to whirl. What if the man 
was right and Sharon had actually been followed? 
That was to make a double job of it, and he playing 
into the hands of the mob instead of stalling it. Jed¬ 
burgh seemed sure that this was an attempt at his 
coercion. Shane wondered at what, and decided 
that the best way to find out might be to ask him. 

118 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“What do they want to force you to?” he began; 
then, at Jedburgh’s forbidding scowl, said, harshly: 
“Good God! man, I’m safe! All I want is to get 
your daughter! I’m responsible ! Damn it, I took 
her there!” 

Jedburgh lighted a fresh cigar, sucked away and 
stared at him. Shane felt that he had never fallen 
under the steady scrutiny of such searching, knowing 
eyes. They had, too, some hypnotic quality, gave him 
a sort of bewilderment that he summoned his forces 
to resist. He succeeded in fighting back the confusion 
to which another might have succumbed. Jedburgh, 
as if he felt his power slipping, shot at him sud¬ 
denly, “What d’ye know about this feller Clamart?” 

“I know all about him,” Shane answered. “I know 
his past life and his present ambitions and efforts. 
We worked together for a while in the French Secret 
Service during the war. There’s nothing wrong with 
Clamart.” 

“Oh, there isn’t, hey? Ever know that he was 
once a yegg ? A master cracksman ? Ever know that 
he escaped from the French penal colony of Cayenne ? 
Ever know that he turned on his old mob and killed 
the chief of it?” 

“He didn’t turn on it,” Shane retorted, “and he 
didn’t kill the chief of it. It turned on him because 
it was afraid of him. Chu Chu le Tondeur killed the 
chief, poisoned him, and Frank Clamart killed Chu 
Chu at Meudon, in a park. Knifed him after being 
shot. The man that got Clamart pardoned and stood 
his sponsor was a friend of mine. So was his wife. It 
was at their house in Paris that I first met Clamart.” 

The heavy face opposite did not show surprise, 
but it was plain to Shane that Jedburgh felt it. 

119 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Olivant stirred slightly in his chair. Jedburgh’s 
round head with its coarse scrub of hair turned slowly 
on the massive shoulders. “Well. . . ?” 

Olivant raised his eyebrows. “I say, Emmet, al¬ 
lowing for the stress and strain of the moment and 
all that sort of thing, how long should you say it 
actually was from the moment the lights went out 
before you were able to see anything at all?” 

“Hold your watch on me,” said Shane. “Look at 
the second hand and tell me when to start.” 

Jedburgh tugged out his own. “Get set,” he mut¬ 
tered. “Go.” 

Shane sprang up, flung out both hands in front of 
him, appeared to ward off an imaginary assailant, 
struck an upward blow with his fist, then whipped 
up an imaginary chair and lashed back and forth 
with it five or six times, enacting in pantomime what 
he had already described, then desisted suddenly and 
cried, “Now!” 

“Fifteen seconds,” Jedburgh grunted. “You could 
see around, then?” 

“A little, but only in flashes here and there. I 
wasn’t looking toward the door. It might have been 
another fifteen before I discovered that Miss Jed¬ 
burgh had disappeared.” 

“And what,” asked Olivant, in his drawling voice, 
“was Clamart doing all that time?” 

“When the lights went out he was talking to the 
princess,” Shane said, shortly. “When I looked at 
him again he was still sitting facing me, swung 
around a little as if to fend off anything or anybody 
from the ladies behind him.” 

“Must have been asleep at the switch,” Olivant 
observed, “while you were on your feet and fighting.” 

120 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Like hell he was,” Jedburgh growled, and added, 
“Clamart, I mean.” 

Shane leaned forward. “Just what else do you 
mean, Mr. Jedburgh?” he demanded. 

“Ah . . . never you mind.” Jedburgh’s tone was 
less discourteous than the words. He was staring 
at the silver-topped humidor again, as a crystal- 
gazer might turn in perplexity to his globe. The 
curt speech was more as though to detach his mind 
from Shane, to fend off interruption. 

“But I do mind,” Shane persisted. “I very much 
mind. Quite apart from Clamart happening to be a 
friend of mine, I want to know about anything that 
has any bearing on this business.” 

Jedburgh made a gesture of annoyance with a 
heavy, bejeweled hand, coarse, freckled, fingers 
tufted with reddish hair. It was as if to say, “Don’t 
bother me.” 

Shane’s face darkened. He leaned forward to 
interrupt the cogitations of this squat oracle, when 
Olivant, observing his intention, thrust at his ankle 
with his slippered foot, at the same time laying a 
finger tip on his lips and shaking his head. 

This gesture of veneration from Olivant for such 
a man as Jedburgh seemed to arouse a sudden gust 
of anger in Shane. More than if Jedburgh had told 
him curtly to “shut up,” an admonition that he was 
in fact about to utter. But one may support from 
the satrap what one will not take from the lips of his 
underling. Besides, it was Olivant who had first 
cast aspersion at Clamart, and it was now Olivant 
who had the cheek to kick at Shane’s ankle. But 
Shane disdained to look at this king’s jackal, to 
notice him at all unless he stood in his way, when 


121 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane also might do a little kicking, but not on the 
ankle. 

He rose slowly to his feet, leaned forward, rested 
his knuckles on the desk, and fastened his eyes on 
Jedburgh, who was still staring at the brilliant object 
on the desk. It did not occur to Shane that Jedburgh 
had a moment ago tried to whelm him with his 
will and failed, so that perhaps he might now have 
better luck with Jedburgh. He succeeded, at any 
rate, in tugging the abstracted gaze away from the 
cigar jar and to himself. 

“Well, what’s the matter?’’ Jedburgh grunted, 
and executed the “sleight of lip” that shifted his 
cigar. Shane noticed it and began to believe that this 
trick was the big, impassive man’s single exponent 
of nervousness. There is almost always something. 

“You are the matter,” Shane answered, sternly. 
“I come here to your house, crushed with horror and 
self-reproach at what’s happened to your daughter 
when in my care, and asking only to give my whole 
thought and effort to her rescue. I tell you the story 
as clearly as I can, then repeat it to this silly ass. 
And all you do is to sit and goggle at your damned 
cigar jar like a blooming idol while he lounges in the 
chair and manicures himself. You haven’t shown the 
slightest symptom of parental anxiety or grief or 
dread. You make some vague allusion to a black¬ 
mail of yourself as a motive for the act, and he chips 
in with a rotten insinuation against a man who, what¬ 
ever his past, is now honest. You back him up, then 
go into a trance. Why don’t you do something? 
Why don’t you telephone Police Headquarters, send 
out a general alarm? If you don’t, I will, myself. 
You make me sick.” 


122 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Olivant, startled out of his calm, cast at Shane an 
outraged look, as if to say: “Sacrilege! A god has 
been smitten here.” But Jedburgh sat under this 
invective unmoved, so far as Shane could see. It 
was as if Shane’s mounting wave of exasperation had 
broken and swelled over a bowlder covered with kelp 
that its subsiding left in precisely the same position. 

“Well, go on and start things, then,” he said. 

Shane reached for the telephone on the corner of 
the table desk. But Jedburgh, with a heavy move¬ 
ment that nevertheless was quick, drew the instru¬ 
ment away. “Wait. That’s not going to get you 
anywhere. Who do you want to call ?” 

“Police Headquarters,” Shane said. 

Jedburgh glanced across at Olivant, a look charged 
with purpose that his secretary was quick to read. 
He said, indolently, to Shane, “Why not Clamart?” 

“Why Clamart?” Shane demanded. 

“He’s more apt to know about it, isn’t he?” 

Shane swung on him savagely. “Look here, Oli¬ 
vant, are you trying to say something or merely to 
get fresh?” 

“I don’t mind saying it, old top. Fact is, I’ve got 
reason to think that good old Frank the Clam is 
running this show, ably advised by Leontine, and 
unconsciously assisted by yourself. You observe I 
have the courtesy to say ‘unconsciously.’ ” 

Shane’s lids narrowed. “What are your grounds ?” 

“Well, for one thing, I’ve been trying to digest 
the coincidence of your taking Miss Jedburgh to that 
place. The Princess Karescu wouldn’t have asked 
her unless you’d suggested it. I happen to know the 
princess. She’s not the sort to want a pretty girl 
butting in on any game of hers with a man as attrac- 

123 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


tive as yourself. You asked her to invite Miss Jed¬ 
burgh, didn’t you?” 

“Yes,” Shane admitted. He felt things slipping a 
little. He found himself again under the strain of 
that most difficult of undertakings, which is to tell a 
straight story while yet holding back its vital salients. 
Many an astute witness has gone down to confusion 
under a cross-examination where he has determined 
to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, but not the 
whole truth. 

“Why did you ask the princess to ask Miss Jed¬ 
burgh?” Olivant persisted, mildly. 

“Because the princess had snubbed Miss Jedburgh 
earlier in the evening. Miss Jedburgh was my dinner 
partner and I wouldn’t stand for it.” 

“That ain’t what you told me,” Jedburgh mut¬ 
tered. “When I asked that question you said maybe 
the princess had taken a fancy to her, or wanted a 
third party.” 

Shane felt the coils tightening. “Yes,” he ad¬ 
mitted. “I ought to have let you have it straight. 
But what’s that got to do with Clamart?” 

“Quite a lot, my dear fellow,” Olivant drawled. 
“Had you seen Clamart or communicated with him 
in any way between the time you met Miss Jedburgh 
at the Duanes’ and when the princess, at your sug¬ 
gestion, asked her to go with you to the cabaret?” 

So here was Shane caught up and in the toils of 
this silken secretary. Shane saw, of course, what 
Olivant was driving at, that Clamart had known 
of Sharon’s going to the Duanes’, where he knew 
Shane also to be dining, and that it was Clamart’s 
suggestion that he bring the girl to the Melting Pot. 
In asking his question Olivant was shooting in the 

124 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

dark, but he had hit the mark. Shane had to take 
his immediate course between lying or telling the 
truth. A third and dangerous course was evasion. 
Nevertheless, he decided to attempt it. 

“Look here, Olivant, if you are trying to intimate 
that Clamart proposed my taking Miss Jedburgh to 
that place, you’re all wrong. He did not know any¬ 
thing about it.” 

“Answer my question, please,” said Olivant, look¬ 
ing at his nails. 

Evasion was useless. No time for reflection. 
Lying futile. This cursed fop, fool or astute, had 
only to pick up the telephone and call Duane to dis¬ 
cover that he, Shane, had been called to the telephone. 

“I spoke to Clamart on the phone,” said Shane, 
“but not a word was said between us about my taking 
either of these ladies to the cabaret, either then or 
before.” 

“Thanks for the candor.” Olivant’s pleasantly 
modulated voice was faintly ironical. “Did you tell 
him you’d meet him there yourself?” 

“Yes,” Shane answered, writhing inwardly with 
anger and humiliation at the turn taken in his inquisi¬ 
tion and coming hot upon his invective of Jedburgh. 

This latter now seemed to have lost interest in the 
whole affair. He leaned back, clasped his thick 
hands behind his shock head, and looked up at the 
ceiling. Olivant asked no more questions, but said, 
pleasantly: “I think you’ve been had, old chap. 
Small blame when you’re messed up with a man like 
Clamart. Neither Mr. Jedburgh nor I believe for 
a second that you are in any way to blame for what’s 
happened. Call it misadventure. The picture as you 
draw it is clear enough for any fool to recognize, 

125 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


even a ‘silly ass’ like me. Gift you have, like your 
ripping cartoons. But if you don’t mind my saying 
so, you’ve given us another picture that’s not quite 
so clear. Clamart sitting quietly while all this fuss 
was going on—rumpus at the next table but one—the 
furniture capsized and dishes smashing.” 

“Well, what’s yours?” Shane asked, badly shaken. 

Olivant smiled. “What if I take a leaf from your 
sketchbook”—his drawling voice hesitated. Shane 
shuddered inwardly. The uncanny insight of what 
he had thought to be a sycophantic dude was getting 
on his nerves—“and reconstruct according to my 
asinine idea? Great stuff, that stunt. Gives one a 
line in the elapsed time of an action. Chances are 
that any person in that place would be willing to 
swear that the room was plunged in Stygian dark¬ 
ness for at least four minutes, whereas it was actu¬ 
ally, as you have demonstrated, about fifteen seconds, 
or call it even thirty. You can do a lot in fifteen 
seconds if you don’t dally—or even in dalliance, for 
that matter-” 

“Oh, get about it, then!” Shane interrupted. 

“Righto!” Olivant rose, moved a smoking table, 
placed some chairs around it, placed a hassock, and 
beyond it a card table, then glanced at the door. 
Shane watched him, fascinated. Was the fellow 
going to reconstruct what actually had happened, 
demonstrate Clamart’s swift, ferocious spring, mor¬ 
tal lunge, and return to his seat? 

“Let’s ask Mr. Jedburgh to hold the watch,” Oli¬ 
vant said, “and you look on. Mr. Jedburgh doesn’t 
need to look. We’ve both got the same idea, I 
think,” and then, as the impassive Jedburgh con¬ 
tinued to roll huge billows of smoke at the ceiling, 

126 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

he added, respectfully, “Will you kindly hold the 
watch, Mr. Jedburgh?” 

The massive head came slowly down. Jedburgh 
took out his watch. 

“One minute, please, before the action starts,” 
said Olivant. “This taboret represents the table 
where you were all sitting. I don’t know just how 
you were placed, but it really doesn’t matter. Sup¬ 
pose you to have been here.” He tapped a chair. 
“Clamart facing you, where I shall sit directly, that 
card table where the bearded gentry sat. And let 
us place Sharon here.” He picked up a cushion and 
laid it on a chair that corresponded actually to 
Sharon’s place. “The cushion is Sharon. Over 
there, the door—the way out. Now, for the sake 
of realism, this scene is going to be staged in the 
dark.” 

He stepped to the wall beside the door to ex¬ 
tinguish all the lights but the reading lamp on Jed¬ 
burgh’s desk, then seated himself in the chair sup¬ 
posedly occupied by Clamart. “Please take the time, 
Mr. Jedburgh, and switch off your light when you 
say go. Your watch has a luminous dial, I believe. 
At the end of fifteen seconds switch on the light 
again. Action!” 

Jedburgh, his hand on the button, looked at his 
watch. Suddenly the room was plunged in absolute 
darkness. Shane, sitting tense, heard a rustle. 
Scarcely more than that. It seemed to pervade the 
room, to come from all parts of it. There was no 
distinct noise, merely that slithering and rustling and 
curious impression of a number of people moving 
about. It seemed to his strained faculties that at 
least a minute had elapsed before the light flashed 

127 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


on again, to disclose Olivant sitting negligently as he 
had been when Jedburgh darkened the room. 

There was a moment of silence. “Well,” de¬ 
manded Shane, harshly, “what about it?” 

“Good!” said Olivant, in a gratified tone. “You’re 
acting your part, old chap, acteur malgre lui. You 
may not think you’re acting, but you are, you 
know.” 

“What do you mean?” Shane demanded, angrily. 

“You haven’t yet discovered that Sharon is miss¬ 
ing. Remember, I said the cushion was Sharon. 
Cushion, cushion, who’s got the cushion?” 

Shane looked at the empty chair; the blood welled 
into his face. 

“Now you get it, don’t you?” There was a tinge 
of mockery in Olivant’s voice, and this augmented 
as he added, “If there were nothing else to convince 
Mr. Jedburgh and me of your absolute innocence of 
any complicity, your expression of surprise would be 
enough. But we never did doubt you in that respect, 
my dear chap.” 

The cup of Shane’s humiliation was brimming 
over. He had looked for something so totally differ¬ 
ent as to miss entirely the secretary’s clever demon¬ 
stration of how Clamart might have slipped around 
the table, seized Sharon, perhaps with a whispered 
word of caution, whisked her off into the arms of an 
accomplice, and returned to his seat within a space 
of fifteen seconds. And even then the Fight had not 
been as now, a pervading one, but the merest flicker 
here and there of matches and torches. 

But the worst was yet to come for Shane. Olivant 
got up, went to the door, opened it noiselessly, picked 
up the cushion, and displayed it to the others with 

128 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the silken cord of his dressing gown whipped twice 
round it and secured. 

“A gag,” he said, “or other form of restraint.” 

Shane slumped back into his chair. It was his turn 
to stare at the humidor. From the great Jedburgh 
strange, unusual sounds were coming. Olivant 
glanced at him, startled. 

Jedburgh was chuckling. 


/ 


129 


CHAPTER X 


S HANE left the house badly shaken. His parting 
with Jedburgh and Olivant had not been un¬ 
pleasant. They had been polite, showed not in 
w’ords, but manner, that they felt sorry for him as 
the innocent dupe of a sinister and crafty intelligence. 

But Jedburgh had declined all proffers of as¬ 
sistance. “Guess I can handle it,” was all that he 
could say, and Shane had not persisted. He had 
laid aside his personal animosity, accepted the whisky 
and soda brought by Olivant and of which he badly 
felt the need. 

Walking blindly down the Avenue, he presently 
hailed a passing nighthawk and was driven to his 
apartment on Forty-fourth Street. His brain was 
in such a turmoil that he decided to sleep, if possible, 
before taxing it further. 

Clamart would have to protect Leontine and Cyn¬ 
thia for the next few hours, if, indeed, such protec¬ 
tion were necessary. So spent was Shane that he was 
unable to decide whether or not Clamart had told 
him the truth in saying that it was he w r ho had killed 
one of the bearded men. Olivant’s demonstration 
had been irresistibly convincing. And it was evident 
enough to Shane that Olivant and Jedburgh were 
absolutely convinced that it was Clamart who had 
managed the abduction of Sharon. Well, what if 
he had? He naturally would not admit it to Shane. 

There was only one point on which Shane remained 
unshaken. This was that whatever devious paths 


130 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Clamart might follow to attain his end, that enH was 
good. Shane might not always believe the ex-thief, 
but he believed in him. The chances are that he 
would have believed in him even when Clamart had 
been a thief, just as the man’s half brother had felt 
enough faith in him to go his bond and make himself 
his sponsor. Shane knew the factors that had 
molded Clamart to a life of crime from childhood, 
from the day that he had made his escape from the 
foundling asylum. It had been about twenty-eight 
years before Clamart’s chance of redemption had 
come, and then he had grasped and held to it. 

To his considerable surprise, Shane, on getting to 
bed, fell immediately into a heavy but restful sleep, 
from which he was awakened at about half past eight 
by the ringing of his telephone, and recognized 
immediately Clamart’s voice. 

“Where are you?” Shane asked. 

“At my house. Any news?” 

“None,” Shane answered. “Have you?” 

“Only a mental clue, the result of deduction.” 

“Are L-and C-all right?” Shane asked. 

“Yes, I just called up. Some confusion in the 
enemy ranks, I imagine.” 

“Some of that thing in ours,” Shane answered. 
“J-believes you did it.” 

“I thought he would. He wants to see me. He’s 
sent for me.” 

“Threats?” 

“No, scarcely that. I’ll see him, but I want to see 
you first.” 

“Come up here,” said Shane, “the sooner the 
better.” 

“In fifteen minutes, then.” 

131 





THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Punctual to the moment, Clamart arrived with the 
air of fresh springiness that is the privilege almost 
under any stress of the man who is both a mental 
and a physical athlete in training. Both of the pair 
were that and, what is more important, had in their 
pasts been that. Their vital plasma was of the sort 
to give them a tremendous advantage over folk in 
whom it ebbed and flowed at intervals, because one 
aever can tell just when the moment of duress may 
come. 

“Breakfast?” Shane asked. 

“Had it. Let’s have your news.” 

Shane described in detail his interview with Jed¬ 
burgh, where he did not spare himself nor fail to 
give Olivant due credit. 

“That man Olivant is not the fool he chooses to 
make people think,” Clamart said. “This gives me 
a different slant on what he told me about Jedburgh. 
It was the truth and he wanted me to know it. He 
thought I was lying, already in with Don Quinto 
and giving him some hot-air uplift stuff, hoping he’d 
tell Jedburgh I was a reformed character and would 
have nothing to do with such a job.” 

Shane nodded. “It’s not hard to guess Jedburgh’s 
position. He’s turned Don Quinto’s scheme down 
because he thinks you’re a silent partner in it and he 
doesn’t trust you. Thinks you might let them down. 
Not through the authorities, but merely plunder 
them. Steal a cargo of opium, ship and all. And 
now he believes that you have managed to kidnap 
Sharon to force him into the deal, make him finance 
this end of it.” 

“Well, I sha’n’t undeceive him right away,” Clam¬ 
art said. “If a powerful man like that wants to 

132 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

believe you’ve got a hold on him, then let him go on 
believing it. You can’t tell when it might come in 
handy.” 

Shane, drinking coffee, turned on him impatiently. 
“The only thing of the least importance to me until 
Sharon is restored,” he said, “is who spirited her off 
and where she is.” 

“My dear fellow, you can put your mind at rest 
on one thing—whoever did is going to take the best 
of care of her. Nobody would waste the daughter 
of a Jedburgh. What I said last night, that she 
might have been knifed by mistake for Cynthia, had 
no sense in it. I was sore with you because your 
man got away. It would have been a splendid start 
if there had been two of their bravos under the 
table dead when the lights went on. Thugs like tfiat 
don’t shiver at thought of the police, like your 
amateur offender. But it scares them perfectly stiff 
when some mysterious Nemesis gets stalking in their 
midst, doing to themselves what they’re out to do 
to others. It gets them rattled and panicky. Such 
people really haven’t any nerve, only jangled nerves. 
I know. I had every slinking Apache in Paris shak¬ 
ing in his boots when it was known that I’d killed 
Chu-Chu and circulated the news that I intended to 
clean up all members of that mob. This one man 
killed is worth something, but to have got the two 
would have been worth a lot. They’d have had a 
hard job to have got anybody else to carry on 
against us.” 

“Too bad you can’t scare them into bringing her 
back,” Shane said, a little dryly. 

“Perhaps I can, if Jedburgh leaves me alone. I 
shall tell him so, and also that the price of my effort 

i33 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


is that he help me to stamp out first this murder 
ring, then the Don Quinto sort of thing.” 

“Why not tell him everything?” Shane asked. 

Clamart shook his head. “He’s not big enough a 
man for that. As I size him up, he’s not a bad man 
nor yet a good one. That’s one of the many differ¬ 
ences between Jedburgh and old Baron Isadore de 
Rosenthal. The baron’s got a heart in proportion 
to his bulk. Jedburgh is a cold-blooded swine. A 
pure precipitate of gain. Rosenthal is keen, but 
impulsive. Jedburgh cold and calculating.” He 
glanced at his watch. “Well, I’ll be getting up 
there. Where can I get in touch with you?” 

“I’m going down to Cynthia’s apartment. I’ll be 
here at twelve and four. But wait a minute. I man¬ 
aged to get those fellows’ mugs last night.” 

“I saw that you did. But that won’t help us much. 
The man will be smooth-shaven by now.” 

“I got him smooth-shaven. Focused on the upper 
part of his face, and undressed the lower.” He 
stepped to the clothes closet, took the menu card 
from the pocket of his dress coat and handed it to 
Clamart, who examined closely the sketch. 

“That’s interesting. He’s a stranger to me, but 
Ling Foo might recognize him. Let’s have it.” 

He took the sketch and went out. Shane finished 
his coffee and eggs, dressed, and went down to see 
how Cynthia fared. It was about ten o’clock when 
he rang her bell, giving the button a touch peculiar 
to him. Cynthia herself let him in. Shane was sur¬ 
prised to find her so composed and apparently none 
the worse nervously for the experience of the night. 
She was alone, Mrs. Kennedy, Cynthia’s aunt, being 
out. After exchanging a few words, Shane asked, 

134 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Did you notice Sharon’s moving, when the lights 
went out?” 

“Since I’ve thought it over,” Cynthia said, “it 
seems to me that she did move away.” 

“Well, that’s tremendously significant,” Shane 
said, “because the natural instinct of a girl startled 
and frightened would be to draw close. Why should 
she have wanted to stray off in the dark?” 

“I can’t imagine, but when that crash came and 
the sounds of a scuffle, I threw out my arm toward 
her and she wasn’t there. I didn’t think about it 
until a good deal later.” 

“If she’d wanted protection,” Shane said, “you’d 
have expected her to turn to me, or even to cling to 
you, since you were next to her. Yet everything 
seems to show that she strayed off into the dark. 
Such an act is unnatural. And when a person does 
the opposite to what one would expect, it’s most 
always the same reason.” 

“Couldn’t she have just rushed for the door? It 
was directly across the room from her, and open, 
and there must have been some glimmer of light in 
the vestibule shining through from the street.” 

“Perhaps,” Shane admitted. “Now look here, 
Cynthia. I want you to pack up and go home. This 
thing is too thick.” 

To his surprise, she answered, spiritedly: “I’ll do 
nothing of the sort. I’m not going to be run out.” 

“Now don’t look at it that way. Your further 
presence can only complicate things. Clamart and 
Leontine and I have got to give all our time and 
thought to this business. It’s going to make it just 
that much more complicated if we’ve got you also 
to guard.” 


i35 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


This was unfortunately put. Cynthia gave him a 
look that was cold and obstinate. 

“You needn’t. I’m not afraid. I don’t think that 
I shall be molested. I don’t believe that anybody 
has any murderous designs on me.” 

They argued it back and forth, on Shane’s part 
vainly. Cynthia was obdurate. She was doing a 
portrait of Leontine, her most promising effort, and 
for the spring Academy. She refused flatly to dis¬ 
continue it. 

Shane felt vaguely that something had come be¬ 
tween them. He could not imagine what this might 
be, and wondered if Cynthia suspected him of a 
sudden interest in Sharon. 

“I’ll write your father,” he threatened, ill ad¬ 
visedly. 

Cynthia’s eyes flashed. “If you do that I’ll never 
speak to you again.” 

“Why are you so cross with me?” 

“I’m not. But I’m beginning to know you a little 
better and find that we haven’t really much in com¬ 
mon. You are a man about town with quantities of 
interests that I don’t think would appeal to me. 
You are a dweller in two camps, established con¬ 
ventional society like mine and the Duanes, and 
another one of—well, irregulars—curious and mys¬ 
terious people, social and legal outlaws.” 

“You wanted Bohemia, yourself,” Shane protested. 

“Not that sort. You entertain all kinds of people; 
give parties to celebrities-” 

“Are you meaning the princess?” Shane asked, 
beginning to see light. He had overheard the prin¬ 
cess say at table that he had promised her some¬ 
thing of the sort. 


136 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“She’s one of many. I don’t think she’s very nice, 
for all of her position.” 

“Lots of ’em don’t claim as much as that,” said 
Shane, “but I see what you mean.” He felt that they 
were dangerously near a quarrel, and rose. “It’s 
hardly worth while to say that it falls within my line 
of work, I suppose.” 

“That’s an old and much-abused reason for a 
promiscuous way of living. It’s one thing to go to 
all sorts of people, and another to have them come 
to you.” 

“How about Leontine?” 

Cynthia flushed angrily. She knew only of Leon¬ 
tine as an exiled Russian noblewoman who had ren¬ 
dered splendid war service. 

“Why do you speak of her so familiarly? I think 
it cheapens her. The Countess Petrovsky is a good, 
sweet woman. Nobody could help but feel the fine¬ 
ness of her. I am proud to call her my friend. But 
I’m not at all so sure about your friend Mr. Clamart. 
There’s something rather terrible about him.” 

“He’s had a stormy past,” Shane admitted, “but 
he’s ^ good man.” 

“He’s hard—like you. Hard and inscrutable.” 

“You’ll be downing me next.” 

“I don’t doubt your good intention, but there’s a 
sort of barrier between us. Last night when you 
found that Miss Jedburgh was missing there was a 
look on your face that made me cold. Oh, Shane, 
what can have happened to her?” 

Shane told her what Jedburgh had said about his 
conviction that Sharon had been followed from the 
Duanes’ and kidnaped. “He would not tell me 
why. Merely that there was an effort being made 

i37 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


to coerce him to the backing of some great commer¬ 
cial enterprise that he disapproved.” 

Poor Shane began to wonder if the time would 
ever come when he could talk openly to all people 
without the guarding of a separate set of reserva¬ 
tions for each. His throwing in with Clamart was by 
no means purely altruistic or patriotic. It was under¬ 
stood that when the time came Shane was to have 
the exclusive handling of the whole press revelation 
of the business. This would mean a scoop the magni¬ 
tude of which fairly staggered him. Not only the 
exposure, but his part in the accomplishment of this 
would place him at the very pinnacle of journalistic 
fame, and bring him government honors, pave the 
way to almost anything that he might desire. None 
of this had any interest at all for Clamart. He was 
a man used to working in the dark, and, when the 
work was done, remaining still invisible. 

There are folk like this, but they are few, whose 
enjoyment of power lies purely in the knowledge of 
it. Popular acclaim meant nothing to Clamart. He 
avoided it and would always avoid it because of his 
past, and he was working to pay a debt to society 
while his considerable fortune, honestly amassed, 
made that element inconsiderable. 

“Well, Cynthia,” said Shane, presently, “I’m glad 
at least we’ve had this showdown. I understand 
better your reasons for telling me repeatedly that you 
would never marry me. They are quite sufficient. 
I am indiscriminate in my worldly relations, and I 
am hard. Both charges admitted. But I don’t 
despair. I love you, and that may win out in the 
end.” 

“I’m afraid not, Shane. I can’t deny being tre- 

138 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


mendously attracted to you, especially at certain 
times, in your softer, boyish moods. Then some¬ 
thing happens to drive me back into my shell again, 
for I suppose that I might as well admit that I’ve 
got a shell. I’m in this sort of world just now, but 
never possibly could be of it. But it seems indispen¬ 
sable to my painting. That was weak tea until I 
came here.” 

“It might get even stronger if you married me.” 

“No. Something tells me that you’d absorb me. 
I suppose that one of two married people must absorb 
the other—unless they fight—and there’s no good 
in that.” 

“I’m not so sure,” said Shane. “I hate compro¬ 
mises as much as you must, but I don’t think that 
individualities are bound to merge for the sake of 
perfect understanding. There are plenty of mar¬ 
ried friends.” 

“That doesn’t sound very satisfactory. It implies 
a reservation. I shouldn’t want to reserve anything 
from my husband. Let’s talk about something else. 
What steps are you and the mysterious Clamart 
going to take about the rescue of Sharon?” 

“It’s up to her father first,” Shane said. “He sent 
for Clamart, who has gone to see him. I’ve an idea 
that Jedburgh considers it merely a matter of price, 
and that he’ll pay it and count on getting even after¬ 
ward. He was decent enough to exonerate me from 
any blame. Seemed to think it was his fault for not 
having taken better care of her, put her on her 
guard.” 

They talked for nearly an hour, though with a 
certain constraint. Shane quite understood it. He 
knew that all of Cynthia’s ideas, traditions, well- 

i39 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


molded point of view, were opposed to the idea of 
•lover or husband like himself, a man of the town, 
all of it, rubbing shoulders intimately with people 
whom she could no more think of “knowing” than 
she could of keeping a jaguar or boa constrictor as a 
household pet. She felt, and truly, that Shane would 
never be willing to abandon his wide and nondescript 
world. She knew that he loved it as an explorer 
loves the jungle, the frozen forests, and the sea. 
It represented life to him, and, without it, limited 
to her peaceful pastures, he would probably contract 
and warp. 

Nevertheless, there was a dimness in her eyes and 
a tremor in her voice when he said good-by to her. 
She loved all that part of him that they had in com¬ 
mon, and this was really a good deal. More than 
that, she loved him physically for the virile mas¬ 
culinity that was of a sort her nature really craved. 
She loved his sort of strength even while telling her¬ 
self that without tenderness, self-sacrifice, and the 
regardless discarding of all about it th^t she did not 
like, it was not for her. 

Shane, considerably sobered, decided to walk 
around to the Melting Pot and look over the ground 
again. He found a policeman at the door, but the 
man recognized him and made no objection to his 
entering. The affair had been reported in the morn¬ 
ing papers, though briefly, owing to the fact that 
they were just going to press. Shane reserved his 
own account until hearing the result of Clamart’s 
interview with Jedburgh. 

Then, just as he was going in, whom should he 
meet but Olivant coming out. This elegant and, as 
Shane was now forced to admit, useful parasite of 

140 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


wealth, greeted him with the cheerful friendliness 
that should obtain between clubmates of the same 
exclusive circle and Manhattanites of the old socially 
prominent set. The two, though never intimate, had 
known each other from boyhood and had known all 
about each other. Shane was five years the senior 
and had always thought of Olivant as something 
of a sissy. Olivant had regarded Shane as “one of 
those clever chaps,” and a “mixer” of rather dubious 
choosing in his associates. It would have pained 
Olivant to have been seen in many of the places and 
with many of the people Shane frequented, this less 
from snobbery than because of his limited means. 
Had he been rich, or even comfortably incomed, he 
w r ould not have cared. 

“Hello, Emmet!” he drawled. “In about five 
minutes you would have been the man I was looking 
for.” 

“You turned dow r n my services last night.” 

“Mr. Jedburgh did. I mentally accepted your 
offer. Quite a habit of mine, or habitat, perhaps, 
that same wide mental reservation. Spend most of 
my time there.” 

“It’s a pleasant country,” Shane said, “and, be¬ 
sides, one’s king there. How did Clamart make out 
with that totem who is your boss ? 11 

“Well—call it a draw. Nobody but himself can 
tell what Jedburgh really thinks, but he’s going to 
lay off Clamart with the police. Your friend put up 
a facer to him. He said, ‘I don’t know where your 
daughter is nor who kidnaped her, though I can 
guess why. If you will give me free rein I’ll do my 
best to get her back, but for a price.’ ” 

Olivant paused and looked curiously at Shane, who 

141 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


said: “I can guess that. He wants Jedburgh’s word 
of honor not to give any backing to the Don Quinto 
or similar scheme.” 

“Why, yes,” said Olivant naively, “but why? 
That’s what gets past me.” 

“Because you’ve overlooked a bet,” Shane said. 
“Clamart is actually an honest man. You ought to 
realize that when such a high-tension crook as he 
was experiences a renaissance, he’s apt to swing clear 
back to the other end of the pendulum and turn saint 
or devotee or tireless welfare worker. They don’t 
just resign.” 

They were standing in the vestibule of the cabaret. 
It appeared to be awaiting an order from head¬ 
quarters to open its doors for business, though every¬ 
thing was still as it had been the night before. 

“Well, I don’t know much about Clamart,” said 
Olivant, “if you’ll permit me to say so. And since 
you know Clamart so well, I’ll take your word for 
him—on that same jolly old reservation.” 

“Thanks for nothing,” said Shane. “I’ll admit 
the honors were with you early this morning.” 

“They still are,” murmured Olivant. “Come in 
here and I’ll show you something.” 

He led the way to the table where the party had 
been sitting, then pointed to the polished floor under 
the rim of the table where Sharon’s feet had rested. 
“See those marks?” 

Shane looked down and saw a number of scratches 
and pitted impressions on the parquet. “Yes, but 
they must have been made earlier in the day. Miss 
Jedburgh would hardly go out for dinner with nails 
sticking out of the heel of her slipper.” 

“She did, though. When she came down dressed 

142 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

for the party, she looked into the labrary, where I 
was sitting with Jedburgh, to show us her gown. It 
was then the dinner hour and she was in a hurry. 
I went with her to put her in the car. There’s one 
of those metal grating mats in the outer vestibule. 
The heel of her slipper caught on something and 
ripped off the narrow leather rim—this thing. 

He reached in his pocket and showed to Shane the 
thin strip of leather that goes last on the heel of a 
slipper. 

“She noticed it going down the steps,” said Oli¬ 
vant. “I advised her to slip on a different pair, 
saying that Mrs. Duane wouldn’t thank her for leav¬ 
ing hieroglyphics on her parquet. But she was al¬ 
ready late, and fussing about it, and said that those 
slippers were made to go with that gown and that 
she’d be careful to keep her heel clear of the floor. 
After you left this morning I thought of that, and 
went out and found this piece wedged in the mat.” 

“Good detecting,” Shane said, and looked again at 
the floor. “Hello! What’s this?” 

For on looking more closely he discovered the 
scratches to lead at regular intervals not to the front 
door of the cabaret but to the rear one. They passed 
around a screen behind which was a swinging door 
with an oval opening cut in it, to avoid collision, 
hooked back during rush hours. In front of this 
door the scratches were more pronounced—long, fine 
grooves, in fact. 

“Here’s where she discovered her mistake and 
started to reverse,” Olivant said. “She appears to 
have been dragged along.” He passed through the 
door. “From this point the linoleum doesn’t show 
much. I’d say she was rushed down these stairs and 

143 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

out the delivery alley that gives on the street. But 
by that time, somebody out here must have struck a 
light, and besides there’s a gas jet always burning at 
the foot of the stairs. I’ve learned that there was 
a sort of scullion down there to dump the scrapings 
into a swill pail in the court as fast as these were sent 
down to him. He must have seen her. I’ve found 
out where he lives. What if we pay him a call?” 

Shane’s opinion of this young man’s acumen was 
augmented. “By all means,” he said. 

Olivant led the way down the few steps, out 
through the untidy rear to the alley, and by this to 
the street. They turned westward, walking rapidly. 

“Thanks for your confidence, Olivant,” Shane 
said. 

“Not a bit, old chap. I know how you feel about 
this. Besides, a stalwart backer might not come 
amiss.” 

The quarter was an Italian one. Olivant, glancing 
at the numbers as they hurried on, said, presently: 
“You noticed, of course, that she seems to have 
walked unresistingly as far as the waiters’ entrance, 
then suddenly discovered that something was wrong. 
That would seem to show that in the dark she must 
have thought it was you leading her to safety or 
escape. But once at the stairs, whoever had her 
whisked her out. It must have been the man you 
fended off. He grabbed her before you got busy 
with the chair.” 

“Looks that way,” Shane admitted. 

A little farther on they came to the tenement Oli¬ 
vant was seeking. “Third story, rear,” he said, and 
led the way in and up the grimy stairs. Then down 
the dim-lit corridor redolent with the heavy odor of 

144 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

garlic, stale cabbage, and steaming suds. Fetching 
up in front of a door, Olivant rapped sharply with 
his stick. There was a moment’s silence, then a 
muffled voice answered something that Olivant chose 
to interpret as permission to enter. The door was 
locked. He rapped again, and there came the sound 
of scuffling feet, a sliding bolt, and the door was 
opened six inches to reveal a swarthy face and a 
shock of black tousled hair. 

“Are you Tony, who works at the Melting Pot?” 
Olivant asked. 

The man nodded. 

“We want to talk to you,” said Olivant, and 
pushed in past him, followed by Shane. The room 
was such as might have been expected from its 
tenant. Olivant turned to the man, who looked 
sullen and a little scared. 

“Shut the door,” he said. “Now, Tony, we want 
to know all about the young lady that was rushed out 
of the back door just before the lights went out.” 

“I dunno nothin’-” 

“Yes, you do. Think again.” Olivant drew out 
his pocketbook and took from the sheaf of crisp bills 
inside a hundred-dollar note. “Do you see this, 
Tony? It’s a hundred, and it’s yours if what you tell 
us leads us to the young lady. Here are four more 
just like it. Five hundred dollars, Tony, and easy 
money. You could start a shop of your own with 
that.” 

Tony looked from one to the other of the two 
men. His face was not a stupid one. No doubt he 
was quick to see that these two were not police or 
private detectives, but of the city’s cream. His 
decision was quickly taken. 

145 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“I tella you what I know, sir. When the lights go 
out a man and a young lady come down past me. 
She seem strugglin’. He slip me ten and say shut 
up. They go out in the court and she holla. I think 
she scared the place pinched. We get raided twice 
already. I look out and see another man come up 
and twist a black scarf round her face. I don’t like 
it and say, ‘Whata you doin’ ?” Then somebody 
call me and I go back inside.” 

Olivant handed him the bill. Tony took it, look¬ 
ing dazed. 

“Did you ever see either of these men before, 
Tony?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Would you know them if you saw them again?” 

Tony looked uncertain. “Mebbe. The first man 
gotta beard. I t’ink de other fella gotta black over¬ 
coat and black soft hat. I see his face just a minute.” 

“How could you see it in the dark ?” Olivant asked. 

“It ain’t so dark. Some light cornin’ from back 
windows in the house behind.” 

“Let me see the ten-dollar bill he gave you?” 
Olivant said. 

Tony took it from his pocket. Olivant glanced at 
it, then gave Tony a bill of similar denomination in 
exchange. 

“All right, my lad,” he said. “You’ve earned your 
hundred. If this leads us to the girl, you win five 
hundred. Keep your mouth shut.” 

“You bet,” Tony answered. 

Olivant looked at Shane. “Anything you want to 
ask him?” 

“How about that alley? Is it the only way out?” 

“No,” said Olivant. “You could go through the 

146 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

basement of the house in the rear and get to the 
other street. I investigated that. The rear base¬ 
ment door was not locked. There’s an Italian cloth¬ 
ing shop in the front, but that’s on the street floor. 
The basement steps lead up under it. I don’t think 
it matters much, though, how they got her out.” 

It did to Shane, but he said nothing. He reflected 
that if Sharon had been rushed out through the alley 
beside the entrance to the cabaret, her abductors 
must have been seen by the Jedburghs’ chauffeur, 
and he was fairly sure that the second man was 
Leffy. But then he had thought it probable from 
the first that Leffy had played an active part in the 
abduction. 

He seated himself at the table, drew out his sketch¬ 
book, and from memory drew a portrait of Leffy, 
Olivant watching curiously. Shane showed the 
sketch to Tony. 

“Have you ever seen a man that looked like that?” 
he asked, and caught Tony’s quick, unmistakable 
glance of recognition. 

“That’s him,” he said, eagerly. “The guy that 
came around the corner and helped hold the lady.” 

Olivant looked astonished. Shane, glancing at his 
face, saw that astonishment was not the only emotion 
it betrayed. 

“That fellow was lounging by the entrance when 
we went in,” Shane explained. “I caught a glimpse 
of him and thought it possible he might be a tipper- 
off for the joint.” 

“By Jove!” said Olivant, easily, “what a thunder¬ 
ing visual memory you’ve got.” 

“It’s no secret,” Shane said. “The means by 
which I earn my daily bread.” 

147 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


‘‘That’s so. Some gift. Well, it ought to help a 
lot. Let’s go. Mum’s the word, Tony. No talking 
about this visit.” 

The dazed garbage wrangler nodded. They went 
out, and in the street Olivant said: “Well, that’s 
that. Why don’t you draw another sketch of the 
bearded man?” 

“I shall. That’s going to be harder. But this 
seems to smash your demonstration at Jedburgh’s, 
Olivant.” ' • 

“Not entirely. That was merely to show that 
Clamart might have drawn her away and passed her 
on to somebody else. She would have needed a reas¬ 
suring word in a voice she knew to have started her 
on her way. But Fve got an opposite slant on it now. 
I believe that Clamart is just as blameless about 
Sharon’s kidnaping as you are, yourself. More so, 
in fact, because I’m sure that if he’d had the slightest 
inkling that you were going to take her and the prin¬ 
cess there, he’d have told you not to do so under 
any circumstances.” 

“Now you’re coming out of your fog,” Shane said. 
“Even supposing that Clamart was fanatical enough 
about his dope-smashing crusade to kidnap Jed¬ 
burgh’s daughter for the sake of keeping Jedburgh 
out of Don Quinto’s crowd, how could he possibly 
have managed it? One of those men was sitting 
there when we went in, and the other must have come 
in just behind us.” 

Olivant raised his eyebrows. “You make it rather 
difficult for me, Emmet, by holding back so much, 
because you are, you know. I have to tackle it by 
algebra, so to speak, instead of by arithmetic. It’s a 
terrible strain on a feeble mentality like mine.” 

148 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“You should worry about that feeble mentality,” 
Shane said dryly. 

“Well,” said Olivant, “to unburden it a little, 
here’s what I think. That first bearded man had 
tracked Leontine there because he knew that she is 
helping Clamart, and thought, perhaps, that she is 
his bel ami or something, and figured that if he could 
grab and get away with her it would put an awful 
crimp in Frank the Clam. The second Johnny that 
followed you in had been, as Mister Jedburgh opines, 
on Sharon’s track. They were working up their 
separate ends for the same beautiful cause. Then 
when their respective sleuthings holed in at the same 
joint, they may have had an argument about it and 
decided that Sharon was the more valuable game and 
decided to concentrate on getting her.” 

“At last,” said Shane, “our minds are beginning to 
go along together.” 

“It would help an awful lot in their traveling side 
by side on that same path and getting to its ultimate 
objective if you’d stop holding out on me. It’s not 
quite fair, old chap. You’ve got a lot more than I 
have. I believe you to be terribly distressed and 
asking nothing more than to get at the truth of the 
business. But I still think you’re holding out on me.” 

“In what respect?” 

“Well, that sketch you just made. It’s pretty 
hard for me to believe that even as keen an observer 
and as good a portraitist as yourself could have 
lamped this thug as you went into the cabaret, 
then made a sketch of him that even this Italian swill 
shifter would immediately have recognized. And 
he did recognize him. I was watching his face. 
Would you be willing to give me your word that 

149 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


you'd never to your knowledge laid eyes on him 
before?” 

“No,” said Shane. “I think he’s a dope peddler 
that hangs out around Mott Street.” 

“Quite so. And you and Clamart, I understand, 
are interested in cleaning up dope peddlers.” 

Shane felt a squirm of exasperation. Here was 
Olivant proving himself every moment more and 
more astute, frankly believing in Shane himself, 
but still distrustful of Clamart. And here was Shane, 
who had been working with Clamart, now benefiting 
by Olivant’s assistance, working with him, yet obliged 
to hold back more important features of the case be¬ 
cause of Olivant’s association with Jedburgh. It 
seemed an almost hopeless tangle if they were going 
to get anywhere, and the worst feature of it was 
that Olivant really trusted Shane, while Shane could 
not return the compliment. 

The same idea appeared to strike the younger man. 
“Seems a pity we two can’t put our cards on the table, 
Emmet,” he said. 

“I’d do so gladly, Olivant, if I believed in Jedburgh 
and knew that you and he believed in Clamart.” 

“What have you got against Jedburgh?” 

“His relations with Don Quinto. What I believe 
is that this damned Mexican has thrown in with a 
filthy bunch that has kidnaped Sharon to force 
Jedburgh’s support.” 

“Why Don Quinto?” 

“Oh, come! You know as well as I do that he’s 
hatching a big scheme to flood this country with 
drugs.” 

“Well,” said Olivant, “I wasn’t sure that you knew 
it till this minute.” 


150 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“I’ll tell you more,” said Shane. “Don Quinto 
knows that Clamart and I are out to block his game. 
So do others associated with him. Those two men 
were not there to kidnap anybody. They were there 
to get Clamart and me. They’ve tried twice already.” 

Olivant smote his hands softly together. “Now at 
last we’re getting somewhere. That puts a different 
face on it. Why didn’t you tell Jedburgh and me 
about that last night?” 

“Didn’t think it worth while. Didn’t think he’d 
believe me.” 

“He does, though,” said Olivant quickly. “You 
say they’ve tried to get you already?” 

“If you’ll come to my apartment with me,” Shane 
said, “I’ll show you a sketchbook like this that 
stopped a bullet not very long ago.” 

“Really? I’ll take your word for that. But the 
question now is, what are we to do next? I’m not 
worrying such an awful lot about Sharon, but I’ll 
tell you frankly, I’m terribly afraid of what Jedburgh 
may do. They won’t give her up without some sort 
of compromising pledge from him, and I really don’t 
know what he may decide to do about it. I’ll tell 
you frankly he was tempted, but my opposition 
turned the scale. This might turn it back again. 
I’m bound to Jedburgh not only by self-interest, but 
by gratitude. He got me out of a dirty mess.” 

“I know about that,” said Shane. 

“Well, you can understand, then, how I feel. But 
I’ve never really been able to sound Jedburgh very 
deeply. I know he’s rapacious as a crocodile and 
just about as cold-blooded. I don’t honestly believe 
him to be capable of much affection even for that 
lovely daughter of his. But he prizes her highly as 

Hi 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


a possession. He’s proud of her. She represents his 
one hold on some sort of social recognition, and he 
wants that, too, if only for its business value. Yes, 
I’m very much afraid that unless we turn up some¬ 
thing quick Jedburgh is very apt to come across. I 
wonder if we could get anything out of Don Quinto?” 

“I don’t believe so,” Shane answered. “He’d 
never dare admit any knowledge of this.” 

“Well, is there anything else you can suggest?” 

“Not at this moment. Perhaps a little later.” 

They paused at the corner of the street. Olivant 
appeared to have something of which he wished to 
rid his mind. 

“See here, Emmet,” he said, “if I give you a large 
chunk of information, will you promise not to use it 
except for Sharon’s immediate release?” 

“Yes,” Shane answered, unhesitatingly. “That’s 
the only important objective I’ve got just now. All 
this other stuff—opium and thugs and things—can 
go to blazes, once I find Miss Jedburgh.” 

“Well, then, Don Quinto has got at this moment 
about a million dollars’ worth of opium safely in 
and awaiting distribution.” 

“How do you know?” Shane asked. 

“He told me so. Offered to show it to me as soon 
as I could get Mr. Jedburgh in.” 

“Then why don’t you play that knowledge against 
Sharon’s release ?” 

“Well, for one thing, it wouldn’t be enough. Don 
Quinto seems to consider it no more than a drop in 
the bucket. And, besides, I don’t know where the 
darned stuff is.” 

“Can’t you find out?” 

“Too late, now. They’ve started our coercion. 

152 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Don Quinto offered me a quarter of the stuff if I 
could persuade Mr. Jedburgh to back his play.” 

“I heard that . . . when I was sketching him.” 
Shane said. “By gorry! Olivant, I take back any¬ 
thing uncomplimentary I ever thought about you.” 

“Thanks, old man. Same here.” 

“You haven’t any idea where it is?” 

“Not the slightest. But if you talk to Don Quinto 
you might bluff him into thinking that you do. Better 
than I could, because you’ve got some other stuff. 
Now I must beat it and get back to headquarters.” 
He signaled a taxi opposite. “Funny about my pan¬ 
tomime. It was pretty nearly right, except in the 
matter of doors, and the minor detail that I was 
acting the role of the wrong man.” 

“What about Clamart’s real action?” Shane asked. 

The taxi had drawn up at the curb. Olivant 
paused with his hand on the latch of the door. “Well, 
if you had done what Clamart did, it would have 
saved us all this trouble. Sort of a tiger man, Clam¬ 
art.” He stepped into the cab. “So long,” and this 
pleasant-spoken young man, who had always, until 
that day, been Shane’s general idea of nothing, 
whirled away. 


153 


CHAPTER XI 


S HANE went around to the offices of the news¬ 
paper of which he was staff artist, and there 
passed another trying hour in giving his description 
of the affair and again finding himself subjected to 
the mental strain of deciding under a sharp enfilad¬ 
ing fire of questions how much to tell and what to 
hold in reserve. 

He left there in a bad state of nerves and with 
the urgent desire to see and talk with the one man 
from whom nothing need be held back. Shane won¬ 
dered how men, especially family men, could pos¬ 
sibly stand the strain of leading double lives. It 
seemed to him that nothing could be more trying 
than to be under the constant necessity of guarding 
one’s speech when in contact with one’s intimates, 
accounting for one’s time and occupations, the bal¬ 
ancing and verifying of movements, almost of one’s 
inner thoughts. It did not seem to him that anything 
could be worth such effort. He reflected on the vast 
number of individuals who were doing that very 
thing, more or less successfully, all the time. 

He felt that he, at least, was not much of an 
intrigant. Jedburgh had immediately discovered 
that he had been holding something back, Olivant 
had known it from the start, Cynthia seemed to feel 
it, and now Shane was uncomfortably conscious that 
the newspaper people with whom he had just talked 
and a man from police headquarters were likewise 
distrustful. In their case it did not so much matter 

154 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

because they had nothing of their own by which to 
check up his statements, and at any rate might have 
ascribed his reserve to some nebular hypothesis that 
he desired to study out more analytically and of the 
proof of which he desired all the credit. 

But worst of all was his oppressing anxiety as to 
Sharon’s welfare. Curiously enough, he seemed to 
be the one on whom this fell most heavily. Jedburgh 
certainly had not shown it, nor Olivant. Shane de¬ 
cided they must both be saurian-hearted individuals. 
They seemed more interested in fixing the responsi¬ 
bility of the act and its motive than in the fate of 
the girl herself. Now, as many times before, it 
struck Shane that human beings were singularly in¬ 
adequate in their faculties of personal affinity. Al¬ 
most any wild animal or bird or fish or insect would 
possess some sense that enabled it to find a missing 
member of its colony. Some subtle instinct, or a sort 
of radio-telepathy. But humans, who claimed for 
themselves the highest stage of animal and spiritual 
evolution, were lacking in it. If a w’olf or seal or 
gull or pigeon were to become separated from its 
mate. . . . 

A pigeon. Shane’s reflections fetched up short at 
the thought of pigeons. He thought of that wearied 
carrier down there at the end of the New Jersey 
coast, and the croft to which it had fluttered. He 
considered the long, low hangar where the work on 
the experimental balloon-plane for party trips was 
suspended because of lacking funds. Then the sinis¬ 
ter baboon face of the man Leffy came crowding 
into the picture, the carrier’s message—Shane, bound 
north to his apartment in a taxi, was suddenly con¬ 
scious of that curious receptive impulse that often 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


stirs the subconsciousness of the inventor, the (as he 
fondly imagines) creator, even the interpreter. A 
sense of receiving something from the void. 

He reached his apartment and called up Clamart’s 
house. Ling Foo answered. He did not know where 
his master was to be found. No word had been left 
by him as to his whereabouts. Shane hung up the 
receiver, angry and resentful. Clamart seemed to 
expect him to stand by for a call, possessing his soul 
in such peace as he might muster, while disregarding 
Shane’s possible immediate need of himself. Shane 
picked up the instrument again and called for Oli¬ 
vant at Jedburgh’s. He got him immediately, but 
Olivant said he had nothing to report. Jedburgh 
had left the house before Olivant got back, leaving 
word for him to “stick around.” 

“I’ve got a sort of vague hunch, Olivant,” Shane 
said. “I’m going out of town and may not be back 
until to-morrow night, or possibly the next day.” 

“Wish you luck, old chap,” said Olivant. “Mind 
your step.” 

Shane changed into a dark-gray tweed driving suit, 
pocketed torch, pistol, sketchbook, and money, then 
called up Clamart’s house again. “Tell the master 
I’m going down on the Jersey beach,” Shane said. “I 
shall be gone overnight. Say that I count on him to 
look after Miss Cabot.” 

Well, that was that. Clamart would be angry, 
but so was Shane. He could not see himself sitting 
there biting his nails or getting nicotinized while 
waiting Clamart’s pleasure. He was no chelah. . 
Something seemed to be tugging at an invisible string. 
Perhaps “hunches” were really messages, after all, 
and from the material as well as the spirit world. 

156 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

A bird resembling a pigeon, possibly a falcon, was 
the crest of his father’s family arms, and his mother’s 
had a rampant stoat or skunk or something, though 
most probably a stoat, because the fauna of Ireland 
does not include skunks, and besides, the position of 
a rampant skunk would be reversed. An aggressive 
skunk would- 

An aggressive skunk? Shane’s mind fetched up 
against this idea as it had at thought of the pigeon. 
He unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a 
small globular object the sight of which would have 
caused a panic in a sophisticated crowd, and the 
throwing of it a stampede. It was a police bomb 
containing tear gas, given Shane not long before by 
a friend in the department. Like many bachelors 
of his age, Shane was a bit of a collector, his present 
fancy being for articles used by or against criminals. 
He had a nice assortment of burglars’ tools and im¬ 
plements, and some of these he now proceeded to 
stow away about his person, reflecting as he did so 
that he must be careful to avoid that danger to which 
many citizens are nowadays so frequently exposed, 
to get arrested, this risk running all the way from ac¬ 
cepting a proffered pick-me-up to buying a railroad 
ticket from New York City across the river for a 
lady, and the menace of exceeding the speed limit 
hovering always like a pursuing genie in the swirling 
dust of one’s car. 

There was enough damning evidence on Shane to 
have got him lynched if taken up on suspicion near 
the site of a recent crime. As he went around to the 
garage where he kept his car his step was heavy, but 
he had taken full precautions not to clink. One can ’ 
also be arrested for emitting such a sound. Shane 

i57 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


reflected that as now equipped he would presently 
be liable to arrest on any of several charges, in which 
might be enumerated speed-limit violation, carrying 
concealed weapons, accessory after the fact of man¬ 
slaughter, housebreaking (for he was determined to 
see the inside of that hangar down there), accessory 
after the fact of kidnaping because of his withhold¬ 
ing certain known facts about it, transportation of 
spirits without a permit (for he had filled his flask). 
This last offense was a double one, because the liquor 
was illicit, to begin with. Practically everybody’s is^ 
that now, no matter how they lie about it. 

So here was the spectacle of a modern young 
knight errant, the avatar in virtuous intention of any 
of King Arthur’s, setting forth upon a quest in a 
country more or less at peace with itself and the rest 
of the world, yet said cavalier pricking his gallant 
way subject to rude seizure and incarceration on so 
many charges that the brain reels at their enumera¬ 
tion and the penalties attached to them. 

Wherefore, commending himself to the god of 
high endeavor, Shane got aboard his car, rolled out 
of the garage, threaded the mazes of a city whirling 
itself in the sort of chronic maze that a self-respecting 
bee or ant or other disciplined insect citizen would be 
ashamed of, and in due time struck the Lincoln High¬ 
way and proceeded to reel in this turnpike under his 
unlawfully speeding wheels like the band of a tape 
measure when one presses on the button. 

“Hooray for action!” cheered Shane to his respon¬ 
sive ego. “Here we go south.” 


158 


CHAPTER XII 


I T was getting dark as Shane approached the vi¬ 
cinity of the lonely house back of the beach with 
the big hangar in a swale of the low, flatly undu¬ 
lating ground behind it. The night promised to be 
dark and still, with a viscid murkiness off the sea. 
But Shane remembered having seen the moon in its 
third quarter blurring through a similar haze over 
the city when he had got out of the car in front of 
Jedburgh’s house in the same hour of the morning 
of that troubled day. 

At what he estimated to be about half a mile from 
the shanty on the beach he ran his car off the road 
into a thicket, and secured it against easy theft by 
means of a tire chain and padlock. He had provided 
himself with some hard-boiled eggs and ham sand¬ 
wiches, good fighting food, and some of this he now 
proceeded to devour, feeling like a prowling creature 
of the night and sandy spaces. 

A flock of curlew flew overhead, their plaintive 
“coor-a-lee, coor-a-lee” indicating a direction down 
the beach toward the shanty. Shane reflected that 
the ancients drew their auguries from the direction 
of bird flights, and that here might be an omen. He 
struck across between the dunes diagonally, and was 
pleased to discover from the bearing of the light¬ 
house that he had made a good reckoning. The tide 
was far out, so he followed the water’s edge. 

Presently the dark mass of the shanty became 
visible, and Shane was shot with recent poignant emo- 

159 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tions. That day marked the closest sympathy ever 
existing between Cynthia and himself, the closest 
that might ever occur, Shane now believed. The 
tide of their mutual affairs, almost at its flood, had 
been driven rudely back by the stormy gust of cir¬ 
cumstance. His words and actions in that crisis, in¬ 
stead of thrilling, had caused her to shrink away 
from him. Cynthia would never get over that with¬ 
drawal in the face of a harsh impulse, Shane thought. 
Then suddenly, with no apology or farewell to Cyn¬ 
thia, his mind turned to Sharon. Unconscious, unin¬ 
tentional comparison. 

Ah, but here was an entirely different nature. 
Sharon, daughter of Jedburgh, could scarcely be ex¬ 
pected to possess Cynthia’s thoroughbred fineness, 
might not even be as mettlesome in a crucial instance, 
or lack the driving power of a will dominant over 
fear. But Sharon would not be dismayed by hard¬ 
ness in a man, if it were just and needful. She 
would expect it to be there somewhere, like hair 
sprouting on his upper lip. She would possibly re¬ 
joice in it, as she had rejoiced when Shane treated 
the princess en cavalier. 

Shane now wished that he had kept on treating 
her that way. This solitary scout of his was in no 
hope of Sharon’s immediate rescue, but on the off 
chance of finding some possible weapon to offset 
Sharon’s value as hostage; a hindrance or actually 
destructive factor to their prospect of early and con¬ 
siderable gain. Shane wanted to see that balloon 
said to be in process of construction for taking 
tourist parties up and down the beach. He could 
not see any legitimate reason for guarding closely the 
construction of a big gasbag furnished with planes 

160 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

that was destined to be put on general exhibition and 
for public amusement as soon as money could be 
found for its completion. It might be finished even 
now and making occasional night flights over the 
sea, these nocturnal voyages ostensibly to protect 
its publicity until the time came. Years before, the 
brothers Wright had done that thing and guarded 
their secret so well that their flights were regarded 
by the world as mythical until they chose to demon¬ 
strate them publicly. 

Shane cautiously reconnoitered the cabin, then, 
circling the big sand dune, approached it from the 
inland side. The back door was closed, but not 
locked. He pushed it open and flashed his light 
about. The interior looked just as he had seen it 
last. This was disheartening. He climbed to the 
top of the sand dune. No light was visible in the 
direction of the house. In fact, he could not dis¬ 
tinguish the house at all. This was better, because 
an honest house, if tenanted, ought to show light 
somewhere at that hour, about seven o’clock. It was 
supper time, and at that season there did not seem 
to be any particular place for people living there to 
go. And he had seen two men come out and drive 
away when watching the pigeon drop down there. 
Besides, somebody ought certainly to be guarding the 
airship. 

Shane set out to examine these premises, picking 
his way between the sand hummocks. He struck 
the road above the house, then decided to visit the 
hangar first. It was good enough going over sandy 
turf. Presently the big dark bulk loomed up ahead. 
Drawing close, Shane discovered that it was con¬ 
structed of something like stucco, probably laid on 

161 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


a loose meshwork of some sort, similar to the rocky 
mountains of a scenic railroad at a recreation beach. 
He could not determine what the roof was made of, 
probably tin. Its width being greater than its height, 
the affair, though flimsy, was no doubt stable enough. 

There seemed to be no windows in the sides, and 
no door other than the small one cut in the big 
frontal ones. Shane let this door scrupulously alone. 
It might be rigged with an alarm. He thought that 
he could cut through the wall itself, after giving it 
a guarded punch or two. So he passed around to 
the rear and set quietly to work. The fibrous mesh, 
with its coating of what might have been a mixture 
of clay, sand, and cement, yielded reluctantly to 
Shane’s wire cutters. Still it took about an hour’s 
work to gash a square U in the wall, when a hard 
shove broke open a flap and gave him space to 
squeeze through. 

A faint, peculiar smell pervaded the interior. It 
was nothing like the odor that he and Leontine had 
both remarked—the acetone smell. Neither was 
it that of seeping rum, nor was it identical with that 
of the ball of opium gum that Clamart had shown 
him, and it was not at all suggestive of the fumes of 
opium when being smoked. Shane knew that dis¬ 
tinctive odor not only from travels in the Far East, 
but from having caught it to his considerable disgust 
in certain exotic entertainments to whch he had been 
invited in New York, but the hospitality of which he 
had declined. Such practices were to his healthy 
cleanliness more than vicious and immoral. They 
were disgusting, the slow putrefaction not only of 
physical, but spiritual tissue, and it had always 
seemed to him that their indulgence was not only of 

162 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


a sort to rot the body, but the very spirit of the taker. 
Shane did not believe that a dead opium addict would 
have any soul at all, or, if so, that this would be of 
an unindividual sort, a kind of ownerless wraith that 
had been separated from itself, the shadow of a 
shade. 

But it struck him that there might be different kinds 
of opium, or that if the smell of it was actually 
there the person storing it would be clever enough 
to mask it with another sort of smell, some persistent 
claimant on the olfactory sense, like musk or butyric 
acid. He imagined himself in the place of one of 
them. He would expect the hangar to arouse the 
interest of excise officers, and he would also expect 
them to examine the big lengths of bamboo. Almost 
anybody would think of them as possible containers 
of rum. But Shane remembered that there was also 
a great deal of stuff of small diameter in the lot, 
the upper extremities of the bamboo trees, about the 
size of fishing poles. These would naturally escape 
examination, since their interiors would hold so little 
liquid. But they could be made to hold a tremendous 
quantity of opium if this were to be rolled into pellets 
and dropped into them. 

But the smell could scarcely come from opium 
plugged in air-tight receptacles like bamboo stalks. 
Shane thought it might be the balloon cover, and 
flashed his light upward. There was no cover. 
There seemed to be nothing, in fact, but a compli¬ 
cated mass of scaffolding of big bamboos, like those 
used in the Orient for building purposes, water pipes, 
rafts, outriggers for canoes, and the numberless 
needs that the almost costless cane so admirably 
supplies. There was indeed a framework of sorts 

163 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


supported by all this apparently superfluous scaffold¬ 
ing, but Shane could make nothing of it, nor tell 
ship from stocks. 

His next discovery was that the skeleton of the 
hangar itself was entirely of the same big-caliber 
bamboo, and that it was a very strong one and easily 
able to sustain the pressure of anything but a cyclone. 
Even then the frame itself would have held together, 
Shane thought. Bamboo, being tubular and very 
tough-fibered, will stand a tremendous strain, as 
anglers know, and these big cane joists and stringers 
might have been safely used for a turnpike bridge. 
It struck Shane that, all smuggling aside, somebody 
had shown a lot of sense in bringing up a schooner 
load of this bamboo from the tropics, where about 
the only cost was that of cutting and loading it. 

As if to corroborate this compliment to the intel¬ 
ligence of the bamboo importer, Shane next dis¬ 
covered that what he had taken to be a partitioned 
room made of the stuff in the farther corner was not 
a walled and ceilinged chamber, but a shored-up 
stack of solid cane, enough material to build another 
such hangar—two of them, perhaps. It was all of 
small diameter, fishing-rod size, the last twelve or 
fifteen feet of the bamboo shoots, and there was a 
stack of it about six feet high by ten in width that 
ran half the length of the building. One would 
have said that these ends, too light to be of service 
in construction, would bring their price as a by¬ 
product for fishing rods or handles of brooms or 
crab nets and the like. There were infinite uses for 
such stuff—split for making of furniture, mats, chair 
seats, portieres, clothes poles, fences, chicken perches 
—almost anything. The joint separations could 

164 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 

easily be knocked out with a long iron rod, thus leav¬ 
ing a pipe of any caliber desired. 

Shane discarded the idea of rum. No use bother¬ 
ing with ore that assays five dollars to the ton when 
one has a claim that will assay twenty dollars to 
the pound. 

Shane selected one of these small bamboo tips 
rrom about the middle of the heap. In doing so 
he observed that the butts of all of these were not 
protected by a joint, having been sawn off to leave 
this at the head of the larger and more serviceable 
piece. He took out his knife and quickly cut the 
bamboo, N that was not yet entirely seasoned, across 
above the next big joint. As he broke it noiselessly 
something suddenly spilled out into his hand, not 
pellets, but a powder. The smell of this did not 
tell him much, but he had no question at all about 
its character. Or possibly there might be other sorts 
of narcotics in the lot. But the main thing was that 
these tips were actually the envelopes of drugs. He 
did not believe that there was a drop of rum in the 
whole place, or, even if there was, it did not interest 
him in the face of this more sinister discovery. 
Shane was tired of the idea, as of the fact, of boot¬ 
legging; thought it probable that the time wasted 
throughout the country in merely discussing it would 
amount yearly into the millions of economic loss. 
The traffic could not be stopped until the people as 
a whole desired it stopped. Scarcely any rum run¬ 
ners at all would be caught, Shane thought, if it 
weren’t that they carried on their operations when 
themselves half drunk. 

He now decided to investigate the house, then re¬ 
turn later to give the hangar a more thorough over- 

165 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


hauling. He lifted the flap and crawled through 
the hole he had cut, then passed cautiously around 
the building to approach the house from the rear. 
The back door gave on a wooden stoop, and Shane, 
discovering no sign of life at all about the premises, 
walked openly up to this and, leaning over the steps, 
turned his torch on them for a moment to see if they 
showed recent signs of traffic. They did, and, more 
than that, they showed some sharp, fresh little 
scratches. 

The sight of these acted on Shane like the fresh 
scent of a deer on a ranging hound. But he imme¬ 
diately discovered that they had been made coming 
down the steps, not going up them. They were too 
close in to the next step to have been scored in mount¬ 
ing, but precisely where they might have been ex¬ 
pected in descent. Also, the rim of the last step 
was splintered, as if a heel had caught on its edge. 
Shane hurried around to the front of the house, and 
there he found them again, this time spaced as if 
going up. The inference was obvious. Sharon had 
been taken into this house by the front entrance and 
later led out by the rear. 

If Shane had been a bloodhound he would have 
given tongue. Not having the special sense of such, 
he could not tell how fresh the trail might be. But 
the fact of Sharon’s having been taken out of the 
rear would indicate that she had been led off in that 
direction. There did not seem to be much reason 
for walking her out the back way and around the 
house. And being thus conducted out across the 
soggy fields or vineyards on foot and in evening 
slippers, the immediate deduction was that she could 
not have been taken very far. 

166 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Shane had now his choice of two methods for 
attempting to locate the girl, neither very promising. 
He might try to follow a trail of footprints with the 
aid of his electric torch, or range in the hope of strik¬ 
ing on some place that might serve for the custody 
of a prisoner. He chose the latter, because it obvi¬ 
ated the risk of flashing his light constantly in an 
exposed area. Returning to the rear of the hangar, 
he started back across the field in a tacking fashion, 
like a bird dog, setter or pointer. It was sea 
meadow, but not marshy, and the going good enough, 
though soggy. 

He was about to turn from his second long diag¬ 
onal when he stumbled on what felt like a path. Get¬ 
ting warm, thought Shane. To flash his light would 
be inviting failure or disaster, but by scuffling about 
and feeling the ground he managed to follow the 
narrow track far enough to get an idea of its direc¬ 
tion, then hastened on regardless as to whether or 
not he was directly on it. It was about as dark as a 
night in the flat open country can get, but there was 
a zone of less intense opacity above the earth, and 
against this, a little to his left, Shane suddenly per¬ 
ceived what at first he thought to be a pole for carry¬ 
ing a wire, but a moment later showed itself as the 
mast of a boat, and the green grass growing all 
around. 

This prodigy did not disturb Shane. He merely 
obeyed the first law of the wild, the same posted at 
dangerous railroad crossings—to stop, look, and 
listen. The boat must be lying in a narrow salt 
creek with sheer banks, and, the tide being far out, 
it would be sunk down out of sight and on the mud. 
It would be a light-draught motor cruiser, Shane 

167 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


thought, adapted to southern voyaging in shallow 
sounds, and Sharon was probably aboard it to sail 
with the full of the tide, about midnight, for Yuca¬ 
tan, perhaps, via Cuba. Not on this little tub, of 
course, but Don Quinto’s small steamer, some¬ 
where out there in the murk. 

For several moments be crouched there in the 
dark, eyes and ears acute, nostrils distended—for 
scent appeared to play an important part in picking 
up the trail of these particular criminals—and every 
special sense keyed to its highest receptivity. His 
mind also was working in that same spontaneous or 
reflexive way that the brain of a lower animal must 
work, not in consecutive, logical ideas, but by impres¬ 
sions received from the void with a sort of fourth¬ 
dimensional synchrony. Humans are often apt to 
phrase their thoughts as they would an oral argu¬ 
ment, and that is what may be so often fatal. But 
with the lower animals thought must be quicker if 
they are to keep on living. A startled deer bounds 
from its bed by a simultaneous contraction of the 
extensor muscles of its four legs, and it strikes the 
earth again with the completely formed concept of 
what the danger is and how best to avoid it 

Shane now concentrated on what might be at and 
about the foot of the mast that stuck up out of the 
field in a fashion so out of place. He dropped 
on his hands and knees and crawled forward, finding 
the ground very wet and spongy. Then he struck 
some tracks of feet that he could tell by the feel, 
the impressions gouged out in a way leading him to 
believe that some big man had carried Sharon. 

Glancing behind as he crawled along, he discov¬ 
ered his background to be impenetrably dark from 

168 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

the tumbling sand dunes. To accentuate this, there 
was a lightening of the sky beyond where the moon, 
well past its full, was trying to shine through the 
murk. Then he made another discovery. 

This was a man sitting on a box or keg or some¬ 
thing of the sort, as one not knowing of the creek 
might have thought out there in the middle of the 
field. Shane could distinguish only his head and 
shoulders, but from the slant of these was able to 
reconstruct his position. He desired urgently to 
take this picket unawares and silently, for there 
might be other guards below and the danger to 
Sharon very great if there should come a sudden 
close alarm. She might even be throttled and sunk 
in the slime. Shane, having ascertained the position 
of this watcher, began to circle on his hands and 
knees so as to approach him from behind. He was, 
as has been said, a sort of pocketed burglar’s field 
case, and he selected from this equipment a leathern 
blackjack shaped like an elongated gourd, of which 
the expanded end was compactly filled with small 
shot, a sort of ball-bearing noiseless death-dealer 
guaranteed to make its pressure felt even through a 
woman’s heavy hair. He slipped his hand into its 
thong and crept silently on his way. 

The tide was flowing into the creek, and its hushed, 
sibilant noises, undertoned by the growl of the surf 
not so far distant, favored him. There are always 
these little hissings as the rising water flows into the 
holes of fiddler crabs and seeps through minute 
honeycombed passages, expelling the air within. 
Shane presently was able to perceive the darker 
fissure of the opposite mud bank. The crouching 
figure he could dimly see was like a mound of mud 

169 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


itself. Shane was not afraid of being actually heard, 
for his passage caused scarcely any sound at all. 
But what he did anticipate was some sort of instinc¬ 
tive warning. It did not seem possible for one crea¬ 
ture, even a human, actually to stalk another within 
striking distance before the projected hostile intent 
should give its subtle warning. 

He was by this time sure of the correctness of his 
assumption that Sharon was down there in that boat 
from which the masts sprang, and closely guarded. 
This stalk of Shane’s held, therefore, none of the 
quality of mercy. It was as devoid of sportsman¬ 
like elements as dynamiting fish, a dirty job to do 
and one to which the slightest alarm might prove 
fatal to its object. Shane crept closer. Within twenty 
feet of his quarry, the crouching figure stirred a little. 
Shane braced his toes for a rush. He was able to 
perceive the turning of the man’s head as he stared 
across toward the dark, bulky mass of the hangar. 
Then he seemed to shift his position a little, gave a 
sort of shudder—as though the chill of the night or 
the near presence of death had laid its slimy grip on 
the vital core of him. Shane edged forward again. 

There came at this moment the sound of a voice 
directly under him, as it seemed to Shane. It was 
Sharon’s voice and said, petulantly, “I want a drink 
of water.” The man at the top of the bank did not 
move, but from beneath there rose a sort of rustling 
about, followed by a clink and faint gurgle. 

As if roused from his stasis by the sound of 
Sharon’s voice, the man squatting on the box thrust 
his head out and upward, like a tortoise, then rose 
sluggishly, stretched his arms, and yawned. 

Shane flattened to earth, face downward. He 

170 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

knew of the betraying luminosity of a white visage 
in the dark, where there are yet some low tones of 
diffused light to be gathered and reflected by certain 
textures. He wished that he had blackened his face, 
and decided now to rub some mud on it as soon as 
opportunity offered. The distance between this 
picket and himself was about twenty paces, and if 
the man had good night eyes he might discover at 
any moment the dark splotch of Shane’s body 
sprawled there on the ground. 

Now that he knew Sharon to be there, Shane 
could risk less than ever the alarm of a pistol shot. 
Even a yell might be fatal to his hope of rescue, 
for the still night air had that sort of conductivity 
to sound that seems to amplify rather than to insulate 
it, and the house was within easy hail. It seemed 
to Shane that if the sentry were to listen acutely for 
an instant he could not fail to hear the beating heart 
not many feet away. 

It was impossible to stalk the man closer while 
he stood thus erect. He seemed now inclined so to 
stand, as if to keep awake, and there was the added 
danger that at any moment he might start pacing 
back and forth to rouse himself to further alertness. 
Shane was by this time sure that he had to deal with 
the man who had been the object of his sketch in the 
cabaret and a few minutes later had gashed his 
knuckles by a knife thrust in the dark, then whisked 
off Sharon. In this case it might prove no easy 
matter to seize and overcome him, even by surprise, 
for Shane had noted the broad shoulders and heavy 
bony frame under the black, loosely fitting coat. 
And there was always that deadly weasel of a Leffy 
down aboard the boat. 

171 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


The watcher now stood as motionless as though 
he had fallen asleep upon his feet. He seemed to 
have petrified. Standing there almost within the 
scope of a fatal rush and blow, there was something 
unbelievable about such lacking perception of a 
closely crowding doom. It falsified all theory of a 
sixth warning sense. To Shane himself the waiting 
was intolerable, especially as at any moment he might 
find himself hopelessly outnumbered. The attitude 
of the sentry suggested this. It was expectant, and 
he stood as if watching for some activity from the 
house or hangar. 

Shane’s patience was not of the animal sort that 
is able, wdien stalking its prey, to ignore the dura¬ 
tion of tense immobility. His pulse steadied, but 
his brain was seething. The waiting grew unendur¬ 
able. He began to tauten for a swift offensive, when 
there came from under the bank the sound of a slight 
splashing of the water. Then the voice of Leffy in 
a whining snarl: “Come on, now. She’s afloat.” 

The other man turned sharply, then asked: “What 
• • • *-\ ^« 
time is it r 

“It’s time to go, that’s what time it is. Come 
down, you, ’n’ lend a hand.” 

The answer to this came in a tone so soft and 
purring and conciliatory that Shane could not have 
accounted for the curious ripple sent down his spine. 
“Right away, brother. I am watching something 
over by the house. Little lights flickering . . . yes, 
some little lights. Will you look and see what you 
make of it? Little lights in the windows.” 

The voice was low, its inflection a distinctly foreign 
one, though of just what nationality Shane could not 
have said. That did not matter. Fie seemed to 

172 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

know instinctively that the speaker’s object was to 
lure Leffy up the bank, and for a sinister purpose. 
Shane would have felt that even if he had not been 
looking, himself, toward the dark bulk of the house 
and seen no little lights. There was a coaxing ca¬ 
dence to the voice, such as might be employed by a 
false dragoman or procureur to entice his quarry 
into a trap. The silken accent of it to Shane was 
unmistakable. 

“Aw, come on,” Leffy answered, and in the utter 
stillness Shane could hear his catarrhal k’n . . . k’n 
. . . and sniff. “You’re seein’ things.” 

“Then have a look yourself. There they come 
again, brother, like somebody carrying a light from 
room to room, with the shades drawn down. I don’t 
like it. Look, and tell me if I am right. I think 
we had better wait.” 

“Wait nothin’,” came Leffy’s grumbling whine, 
followed by his palatal k’n . . . k’n. But his curi¬ 
osity had been aroused, for there was a scuffling at 
the bank. Shane, closely watching the watcher, saw 
him stoop and take something from under the box 
on which at first he had been sitting, then straighten 
up again. The dark bulk of Leffy’s figure appeared 
and moved toward the other. “Where?” He 
snarled. “I don’t see no lights.” 

“Don’t you, brother . . . over that way?” He 
pointed, stepping back a little. Shane, with eyes 
burning through the gloom, saw the other arm swing 
up suddenly, then down again. There was a thud 
of impact, not loud, but of deadly significance. Leffy’s 
body had the curious aspect of being driven into the 
soggy turf. It sunk slowly, like an oar thrust into 
the ooze. The soft voice said, but now with a sort 

i73 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


of mocking amusement, “There, now do you see those 
little lights, brother?” 

Leffy, utterly collapsed, was practically invisible to 
Shane. The man who had thus treacherously dis¬ 
pensed with him appeared to stifle a chuckle. Or 
perhaps it was merely a grunt of satisfaction. He 
leaned over a little and at the same time tossed 
something in Shane’s direction, for he was facing 
that way. It might have been a short section of lead 
pipe. And as it left his hand the man seemed sud¬ 
denly to freeze. Shane saw that he had been dis¬ 
covered. He gripped the sod with both hands, got 
a purchase with his toes, and as the other sprang at 
him he launched himself to meet him. 

The actions of the two were, in fact, precisely 
similar, though their forces opposingly directed. No 
doubt their impulse was identical; each to subdue the 
other as quickly and silently as possible. Neither 
struck. The same instinct impelled them—that old¬ 
est one in the ages of human individual conflict; more 
ancient than the use of lethal weapons, however 
primitive—to clinch and choke. It was the sort of 
duel fought by the solitary prowlers of hostile tribes 
where the necessity was not only to slay, but to do 
so silently, without the risk of alarm. Shane dis¬ 
regarded even the slung shot attached to his wrist 
by its leathern thong. He did not want to risk a 
faulty blow. His antagonist had no time for the 
drawing of any weapon. 

They came together more in the fashion of lower 
animals than men, each striving for the other’s throat 
and each depending on a potential physical superi¬ 
ority. For a moment it was a curious fumbling affair 
of strong gripping fingers, and chins jammed down- 

174 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


ward to protect the vulnerable channels of breath. 
Both were strong and agile men and it may be that 
both possessed an equal skill in wrestling, but each 
was animated by the same idea that barred the tricks 
of wrestling, the fear that the other might make an 
outcry to summon aid not far away. 

In such an elemental struggle one might assume the 
advantage to be with the more primitive. On the 
contrary, this proved the undoing of Shane’s an¬ 
tagonist. Whether through sheer animal instinct 
or in the hope of an advantage to be achieved through 
pain, he slightly shifted his chin to fasten his teeth 
in Shane’s left shoulder. In doing this he may have 
overlooked the fact that upper clothing had come 
into vogue since such aboriginal practice, and not 
only did he get a mouthful of heavy homespun, but 
in the very torsion of his neck gave Shane the chance 
to slip in a pair of powerful thumbs—and the rest 
proved easy. 

Shane presently relaxed his hold, the body under 
his had gone limp and lifeless. The jaws had re¬ 
laxed in that first throttling grip, so that he had 
suffered no more than a violent bruise where for a 
moment the strong teeth had closed. The singular 
duel had ended as it was begun, in stealth and silence. 

Shane paused for a brief instant to get his breath 
and assure himself that there was no shamming about 
the business. He rose and looked round for his 
cloth hat—another curious and later instinct, the 
first post-battling impulse of the schoolboy—to find 
his hat, restore his poise by the application of this 
insignia. Shane found first the other man’s hat, a 
sort of yachting or mechanic’s headgear. He clapped 
it on his head, reflecting that if caught sight of in 

i75 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the murk it might serve as a momentary disguise. 
Then discovering his own close by, he shoved it in 
his pocket, walked to the edge of the bank, and 
clambered down it aboard the boat. 

The boat, resting, as Shane had thought, on the 
mud, with but a few inches of water around it, was 
of a sort he had expected to find, a motor cruiser of 
about forty feet length, with a trunk cabin that ex¬ 
tended a little abaft the beam. He opened the door 
and looked inside to see Sharon crouching on the 
edge of one of the bunks with a man’s coat thrown 
over her shoulders. 

“Sharon,” he said softly. “It’s Shane Emmet. 
Come quickly.” 

Sharon came. She did not cry out or fling herself 
into his arms, nor do any of those risky, time-wasting 
things. She came out of that cabin like a child escap¬ 
ing from the clutch of a kidnaper, which was, in 
fact, her situation. Shane helped her up the greasy 
bank and, taking her hand, they set off along the edge 
of the creek. He did not know at what moment the 
watch might be relieved. 

Sharon stopped. “Darn it, my slipper’s off!” 

Shane looked back and caught its silvered gleam. 
He retrieved it, put it in his pocket, then, as they had 
some distance to go and no dancing slippers would 
stay on against the suction of that spongy turf, de¬ 
cided to carry her. He did not do this in the tiring 
and romantic fashion of melodrama. They had a 
considerable distance to go, and Sharon, though of 
slender appearance, was solid. Shane took her up 
“piggy back” as children say. Sharon gave a sort 
of nervous giggle at this mode of transportation. 
Her porter was enormously relieved to find that 

176 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

she could giggle and that her mind was still clear 
enough to find some humor in the situation. He 
had feared that she might have been drugged, fed 
some of the poppy gum, or rendered otherwise semi- 
comatose. 

But she was not. Evidently intimidation had been 
enough to keep her a passive prisoner. Shane, half 
bent to take the strain of her weight where this could 
be best supported, made of himself a beast of burden 
and headed for the road above the house. He struck 
a patch of heavy going, but managed to plod through 
it to firmer ground. 

Presently Sharon murmured, “How did you man¬ 
age to find me ?” 

“Tell you later,” panted Shane. “Don’t talk. 
Sounds carry, a still night like this.” 

His heart was fairly bursting with satisfaction. 
Here was Sharon by way of being rescued and two 
more of the murder mob retired from the running. 
There would be a crimp put in that crowd, Shane 
thought, but he intended to strike them even harder 
before the night was over. Bamboo should be fairly 
combustible, he thought, and he was inclined to be¬ 
lieve that if anybody got in the lee of that hangar 
before his night’s work was over, said person might 
enjoy a beautiful pipe dream without bothering over 
the usual paraphernalia for such—the pipe and roast¬ 
ing pin. 

In this beautiful idea he strode along, now and 
then shifting Sharon a little higher on his back. 
Luckily, his anatomy was built for such a strain, 
though his biceps began to feel it at the end of two 
hundred yards. By the time he struck the road, 
Sharon’s normal weight of some hundred and thirty 

177 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


pounds was making its pressure felt. And yet the 
task was far from being an unpleasant one. 

He set her down and straightened his arms. Then, 
without pausing for an exchange of experiences, he 
jtook her hand and hurried her along the sandy road 
<to where he had hidden his car behind a thicket of 
^alders. Here he asked his first question, that burning 
one always foremost in the mind where an abducted 
damsel is concerned, “How have they treated you?” 

“Not so badly,” Sharon answered. “I played 
right into their hands like a little fool. When the 
lights went out I thought of course it was a raid 
and that we might be locked up for having that 
champagne on the table. A man grabbed my arm 
and I thought, of course, it was you rushing me out 
the back way. I never discovered my mistake until 
I found myself being crammed into a car.” 

“But didn’t you see who it was when you got 
outside?” 

“No. Somebody said, ‘Hide your face,’ so I 
ducked my head. I thought it was fun. They led 
me through a basement and out on to another street, 
and the next I knew we were in a big car and one 
of those bearded men who had been sitting near us 
was telling me that if I made the slightest fuss he’d 
cut my throat. So I didn’t make one.” 

“Wise girl,” said Shane. 

He took his driving coat from the back of the 
seat and held it for her. “Slip this on, then curl 
up on the seat and try to take a little nap. We’ve 
got a long and tiresome ride ahead of us.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“Back to burn out this nest of adders. Have you 
had your supper?” 


178 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Yes. But why do you want to burn them out? 
Why not arrested and punished?” 

“There are too many complicating features, and 
what I plan to do will be a fairly heavy penalty. 
Please don’t get out of the car until I come back.” 

He had brought with him a five-gallon can of 
gasoline for emergency, and half of this he now 
poured into the tank. “I’ll not be long. You must 
not budge from the car, no matter what you see or 
hear. If I don’t turn up in an hour, please drive to 
Atlantic City and go to the Ambassador and tele¬ 
phone your father that you are safe. Ask him to 
call up Clamart and tell him that you left me at 
the balloon hangar. He’ll understand and know 
w r hat to do about it. You can drive this car, can’t 
you ?” 

“Yes, but—but I don’t want you to go. Can’t that 
wait?” 

“Not very well,” said Shane. “There’s a reason. I 
want to do my job before they know of your escape.” 

He unlocked the chain, then took out of his wallet 
and handed Sharon a sheaf of bills. “Shove these 
in the pocket of your coat. If you should be ques¬ 
tioned, just say that you do not care to make any 
statement until you have seen your father. But I’m 
almost certain to be back within the hour.” 

He picked up the half-filled can of gasoline and 
set off down the road again. The peculiar quality 
of his cosmos that Cynthia found so impossible to 
support was now strongly functioning. Shane felt 
no more compunction at thought of the two corpses 
that must now be stiffening over there by the creek 
than if they had been a couple of water moccasins. 
Nor had he any doubt but that the word “corpse” 

179 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


was exact. He had fought with such intent, not 
being of that class of hero that is a conscientious 
objector when dealing with proven thugs. 

As before, he approached the premises with cau¬ 
tion; then, no man staying him, was about to creep 
into the aperture that he had cut, when through the 
stilly night came the purring vibration of a quietly 
running car. It drew rapidly nearer, seemed to 
turn into the place, then stopped. Shane shoved his 
can of gasoline into the hangar, then slipped to its 
corner and peered around it. A big limousine was 
drawn up almost against the building, and two men 
in the act of getting out of it. Shane could distinguish 
no more than that one of them was a bulky and the 
other a tall person. Then a voice said audibly, in 
Spanish, “Go wake them up.” 

Two links in the chain of evidence. “That,” 
thought Shane, “will be Don Quinto, and the chauf¬ 
feur, possibly, the elevator boy on whom Clamart 
so cleverly stuck the killing of Colling.” And then, 
to overwhelm this gratifying verification of the 
theory on which he had that day acted and was still 
about to act, a harsh voice of unmistakable timbre, 
inflection, and accent said, with a contempt of the 
sinister stillness of the place: “So here’s where you’ve 
got it, eh? Well, where’s my darter?” 


CHAPTER XIII 


J EDBURGH. So they had succeeded in coercing 
him, as Olivant had feared they might. Shane’s 
first thought was that he had misjudged the man, 
that his paternal affection must be far deeper than 
he and Olivant had given Jedburgh credit for. No 
doubt his cold impassivity had been a mask. He 
had got in touch with Don Quinto, made a bargain 
or a compromise, and come in person, contemptuous 
of any risk, to take Sharon away. 

“Come into the house,” said Don Quinto, in ac¬ 
cented English. “You have nothing to fear.” He 
made a gesture toward the hangar. “Yes, my friend. 
There’s the treasure under the eyes of everybody 
for miles around. Would you like to look inside?” 

“No,” growled Jedburgh. “I want to look at my 
darter.” And then he added, in words that seemed to 
freeze Shane’s narrow,“I want to know what sort of a 
chance I’m takin’ on this feller Clamart lying to me.” 

“If that man told you she was here,” said Don 
Quinto, “then it was not because he wished to help 
you recover her,” and with this obscure remark he 
started toward the house, in which the the chauffeur 
had already disappeared. Jedburgh stood stock still, 
as if turning this last remark in his mind. Even to 
Shane it had sounded the equivalent of the Spaniard 
saying, “If Clamart told you that your daughter was 
here, then it was not to help you recover her, but 
to lead you to put yourself in the same fix.” 

It appeared now to strike Jedburgh that way, too. 
Don Quinto’s choice of words had no doubt been un- 

181 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


fortunate. He had probably intended to convey the 
idea that if Clamart had told Jedburgh that Don 
Quinto’s crowd were Sharon’s abductors, the infor¬ 
mation was less to benefit Jedburgh than to arouse 
his rage impotently against the drug runners. 

Shane could see that Jedburgh’s suspicions of hav¬ 
ing run himself into a guet-apens were roused. The 
burly capitalist, looking precisely like a big brown 
bear on its haunches in the lessening obscurity, did 
not budge from his tracks. He was not only like a 
bear in appearance, but no doubt at that moment 
his emotional, warning instinct, sullen fury, were pre¬ 
cisely those that might have been felt by such an ani¬ 
mal more or less accustomed to the propinquity of 
humans, if it were suddenly to find itself surrounded. 

There seemed nothing to suggest immediately that 
Jedburgh had run into a trap. Don Quinto had gone 
into the house, leaving him apparently to follow when 
he got ready. There was nobody in sight and the 
car had been left standing ready for anybody to get 
in and drive away. And yet for some reason Shane 
was strongly of the opinion that if Jedburgh shouTd 
try to leave those premises, something would imme¬ 
diately be done about it. 

Jedburgh, evidently of the same mind, did not at¬ 
tempt to leave them, neither did he show any disposi¬ 
tion to enter the house. He reached in an inner pocket, 
drew out a big cigar, lighted it, and stood there puff¬ 
ing, thick legs apart, though not visible under a long 
coat that reached almost to the ground. Jedburgh had 
altogether the aspect of some plantigrade mammal 
who might remain in that position indefinitely with 
no great amount of fatigue or inconvenience. He 
suggested less stolidity than an unlimited animal pa- 

182 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


tience, the animal expectancy that may remain tense 
and motionless indefinitely until something happens. 

So now Jedburgh stood and smoked while Shane 
stood and watched, no more than his eyebrow stick¬ 
ing round the corner of the hangar. Jedburgh’s 
reference to Clamart had furnished a fresh prob¬ 
lem. Did Clamart know where Sharon had been 
taken or had he merely desired to prove to Jedburgh 
the rank outlawry of this mob and that it would stop 
at nothing, even at a knife in Jedburgh’s own throat 
if he defied them? Perhaps Clamart, coldly weigh¬ 
ing values, had decided that Jedburgh dead would 
be better for everybody else than Jedburgh living 
and backing such a huge and nefarious scheme as 
was here in the bud. Or again, Clamart might have 
believed that Jedburgh, thus coerced by force, would 
prove a more hostile force to these others than could 
be in any way launched against them. 

So far as Shane could see, it was now up to Jed¬ 
burgh. He wondered what this silent ursine indi¬ 
vidual was going to do about it. There was indeed 
everything outrageously bearlike about the man in 
look and attitude and, as Shane knew, in cunning 
intelligence. His massive head, heavy but sloping 
shoulders, and thick underpart enveloped in the fur 
coat looked enough like a bear to have got him 
instantly shot if he had been poised that way in the 
yard of some settler’s cabin in the wilds. 

Shane had not long to wait. The back door opened 
and Don Quinto came out, followed by three other 
men and his chauffeur, four in all, for the baiting of 
Jedburgh. Shane wondered what they had been 
doing in there. Jedburgh’s head moved a little, but 
that was all. 


183 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“Why don’t you come in?” Don Quinto demanded. 

“Where’s my darter?” Jedburgh growled. 

“She is not far from here.” 

“Go get her, then. Nothin’ doin’ until I see her.” 

One of the others spoke. “You’ll see your 
daughter as soon as you sign up, Mr. Jedburgh.” 

“I’ll see her first,” grunted the big man. 

They glanced from one to another. It was evi¬ 
dent enough that here was an ultimatum, that noth¬ 
ing short of violence, and a good deal of that, would 
move this incubus. 

“Oh, well, then!” snapped Don Quinto. “Go and 
get her, one of you.” 

A member of the group detached himself and 
started off across the meadow in the direction of the 
creek. Fortunately, he passed on the other side of 
the hangar. Said Shane to himself, “Something note¬ 
worthy is soon about to happen.” The others of the 
group seated themselves on the running board of 
the car, lighting cigarettes. Nobody spoke. Jed¬ 
burgh continued to loom there like a monolith, a 
heathen joss with a burning joss stick stuck in it. 
Shane wondered if either of the hands thrust down 
into the slashed pockets held a pistol, and, if so, 
how quick on the draw and accurate in firing Jed¬ 
burgh might be. There was every potentiality of a 
ruction. Shane also wondered if he himself could 
make fairly sure of his individual targets at that 
distance of about thirty yards and in that dim light. 

For the murk was lightening now as the moon be¬ 
hind it threw down its rays less obliquely. Still, it 
was impossible to distinguish anything about these 
men. Shane thought it probable that their plan had 
been to get Jedburgh in some way committed to their 

184 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


enterprise, deliver up Sharon, then get in their boat 
and be set aboard some ship possibly lying behind the 
breakwater across the bay. 

The tense silence was rudely broken. The man 
dispatched to fetch Sharon came rushing breathlessly 
back into their midst. 

“She’s gone,” he said, hoarsely. “Somebody’s got 
her—and—and croaked Leffy and Danielo.” 

There was an immediate commotion. The other 
four sprang up, began to question the messenger. 
Jedburgh alone stood fast, but the end of his cigar 
glowed with a fiercer light. Then in the confusion 
of voices Shane heard the name Clamart several 
times repeated. But not in execration. It was 
rather as a group of startled habitants might pass 
back and forth the word loup-garou. They peered 
about them into the diaphanous darkness. Then Don 
Quinto stepped up to Jedburgh. 

“You hear?” he said, snarlingly. “Your daughter 
is gone and our two men have been murdered.” 

“Glad of it,” rumbled Jedburgh. “They had it 

• > >> 
comm . 

“It is this devil Clamart’s work.” 

“Then the feller’s too much for ye, ain’t he?” Jed¬ 
burgh asked, immovably. “That makes four of you 
he’s got.” 

“How four?” 

“Colling, the man in the cabaret, and this pair. 
Better call it a day’s work, I guess.” 

There was a moment’s silence, then a more cul¬ 
tured voice said, coldly, “We’ll call it a day’s work, 
Mr. Jedburgh, when we become convinced that you 
are with us.” 

“Oh, will ye?” Jedburgh said, contemptuously. 

185 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“Well, then, you can call it any damn thing you like. 
You know my terms.” 

“But your daughter is gone!” cried Don Quinto. 

“That ain’t my fault, is it?” 

“Nor ours,” snapped Don Quinto. 

“Then it’s a deadlock,” said Jedburgh, indiffer¬ 
ently. “How do I know but what you’re lyin’? 
What d’ye suppose I came here for, anyway?” 

The man of the cultured voice said, in a tone far 
more ominous than any angry one : “We know what 
you came for, Mr. Jedburgh. But we also know 
that you are not going to leave this place alive until 
you meet with our demands.” 

“Oh, ain’t I?” Jedburgh asked, and his big bulk 
half turned to front the speaker, though his feet did 
not change their position. “Why not?” 

A thrill of admiration for him shot through Shane. 
It was plain enough that whatever Jedburgh might 
or might not be, he was at least unamenable to bluff. 
The conspirators seemed to feel this. There was a 
moment of silence. Jedburgh’s name, power, and 
no doubt more than that, his grim, dominant per¬ 
sonality, seemed to hold them at bay. But Shane, 
feeling the crisis close at hand, silently drew His 
pistol and, raising it with one hand, steadied it against 
the corner of the hangar with the other. 

“If you are shown these dead men, will you be¬ 
lieve what we say and do as we ask?” Don Quinto 
demanded. 

“No, damn you,” Jedburgh growled, “not if you 
show me a regiment of dead men. You can show me 
my darter alive and unharmed.” 

He was still facing the other speaker. Shane cov¬ 
ered Don Quinto as well as he was able in the gloom. 

186 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

And so they all stood for the matter of some seconds, 
tense and locked, Jedburgh like a grim fort or stock- 
house besieged by savages not yet quite determined 
on their manner of attack, in ignorance as to the 
garrison within and its power of defense. 

Just what fired the mine Shane was unable to 
perceive. It might have been some overt movement 
on the part of the chief spokesman, the apparent 
chief. More probably it was that aggressive initia¬ 
tive that had carried Jedburgh through other crises, 
whether physical or fiscal. The dominant trait that 
had led him always to speak little but act first. The 
swifter intelligence that told him there was no longer 
any other way out than to fight it out. 

For now, as Shane watched tensely, there sprang 
from the side of Jedburgh’s heavy bulk a tongue of 
flame. He had fired through his capacious pocket 
into the body of the chief. The fraction of a second 
later, Shane fired also and scored a hit. Don Quinto 
collapsed, and immediately Shane, discovering the 
three that remained closely grouped, shot into them 
twice, running forward as he did so. And again Jed¬ 
burgh’s pistol barked and kept on barking. 

From some man on the ground the cry of “Clam- 
art!” rang out. But it made no difference. Jed¬ 
burgh had done his job thoroughly, and as one who 
takes no chances he did not stop even with the enemy 
on the ground at his feet until Shane was within ten 
paces of him. Then slowly and deliberately he 
turned, and before Shane could realize his intention 
Jedburgh’s pistol blazed out into his face. 


187 


CHAPTER XIV 


S HANE opened his eyes and looked stupidly about 
him. He was on the ground. At a little dis¬ 
tance he discovered several bodies grotesquely 
sprawled. Jedburgh was gone, the car was gone. 
The night seemed to have darkened again. 

Shane raised his hand to his head. Evidently 
Jedburgh’s last bullet had plowed along the top of it, 
the very crest of it, the brushing impact stunning him. 
Then Jedburgh, that methodical but swift-striking 
bear, having extricated himself from his dilemma, 
had climbed into the car and driven himself away. 

Shane felt very weak and a little sick, but his mind 
was clear enough. He took a pull from his flask, 
then lay for a moment gathering his forces. It was 
evident to him that Jedburgh, concentrating all of 
his attention on his own offensive defense, must have 
failed to discover that he had an ally. Believing 
himself to be flanked, he had with characteristic 
method focused his attention on those nearest, taking 
his chance on the more distant assailant until free to 
deal with him. Then, having accomplished this, he 
had got into the car and left that place before some 
other might be summoned by the fusillade. His 
pistol was no doubt empty, and it is probable that 
he may have thought Shane to be one of the two men 
falsely reported as killed. 

Well, here at least was a good job well done, 
Shane thought, though not entirely finished. He 
also had a desire to leave those premises, and speedily. 

188 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


He scrambled to his feet, and in the access of 
strength furnished by the stimulant dragged one 
after the other of the corpses to the hole he had cut 
in the hangar and shoved them in. He crawled in 
himself, took the can of gasoline and poured its con¬ 
tents where he thought it would do the greatest good, 
on a heap of rubbish, mostly splintered cane. Then 
taking a long and slender piece of the stuff, he 
saturated it its length, in a manner to serve as a fuse, 
its end projecting out of the hole. He struck a 
match, lighted this, and retired with alacrity. 

In a very few moments Shane opined that big 
hangar would be giving out salvos like the battle of 
Bunker Hill. Years before at Panama he remem¬ 
bered having heard the burning of some wattle huts 
in which smallpox cases had been found, and the 
violent explosions caused by the sudden heating of 
the air chambers between their joints, like pop corn 
on a giant scale. He desired to be well away from 
that vicinity when this began to happen, and it ac¬ 
tually did begin to happen just as he reached the car. 

“Merciful heaven!” Sharon cried. “What’s all 
that?” 

“Tell you later. We want to get out of this, and 
quick.” 

“Who was in that big car that went roaring past a 
few minutes ago?” She glanced at his face. “You’re 
wounded.” 

“Just ‘creased’ a little.” Shane took off the cap 
that had belonged to the watcher on the bank and 
sent it skimming into the bushes. It had fitted tightly 
and no doubt by the pressure of its band helped to 
control the bleeding. He had pocketed his own 
cloth hat, and now put it on. 

189 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


They sped along for several miles on the road that 
he had come before Shane looked back. There was 
already a lurid glow in the sky, and from some ham¬ 
let beyond, a church or school bell was clanging an 
alarm. Sharon looked back also and gripped his arm. 

“I burned up that nest of snakes.” 

“Oh, Shane!” She had heard the others call him 
that. 

A pair of headlights appeared far in the distance. 
Shane pulled down his hat. The lights, approaching, 
dimmed as they drew near. Shane bore past with¬ 
out dimming his own, ignoring the cry of, “Where’s 
the fire?” A little farther on he stopped, got down, 
and saturated a handful of waste with gasoline and 
washed the bloodstains from his face and hands, then 
jammed another piece against his scalp wound. He 
began also to search his pockets for incriminating 
evidences of unlawful enterprise—the slung shot, 
gimlet, small bent jimmy with a hook and claw, 
pliers, and the like, with a bunch of skeleton keys— 
and coming presently to a bridge over a tidewater 
creek, he slowed and tossed over the varied assort¬ 
ment, with his pistol, to settle in the ooze. If 
stopped or questioned or subjected for any reason to 
examination, he did not care to explain the why and 
wherefore of these felonious accessories. 

Sharon, clever and self-restrained girl, refrained 
from asking any questions at all. Perhaps it oc¬ 
curred to her that Shane had been recently engaged 
in such highhanded reprisals as he might not care 
to have her know about, if only so that she could 
answer truthfully that she did not know about them. 
Or he might merely wish to give undivided attention 
to his driving. 


190 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


They began presently to run into a string of cars 
all hastening toward that lurid glow, that was, how¬ 
ever, less intense than Shane had expected, partly be¬ 
cause of a fine Scotch mist drifting in from the sea 
and partly, no doubt, because the tin roof and stucco 
walls had caved in to cover it. Shane reflected 
grimly that if there happened to be any opium 
smokers among the spectators, they had only to stand 
on the lee side to enjoy a free debauch. 

Presently Sharon asked, timidly, “Where are we 
going? 

“Home, if you think you can stick it out.” 

“Of course I can. There’s really nowhere else 
for me to go, all dressed up like this. How about 
yourself?” 

“I’m all right. This has been one glorious hurrah.” 

“Papa must be frantic.” 

“That’s not quite the word. I can’t imagine your 
honored parent looking, acting, or feeling frantic.” 

“Not just that. But I’ll bet he was mad.” 

“Well,” said Shane, “the last I saw of him he was 
acting as if he were sorely vexed. He may have 
been mad, but there was a lot of method in it.” 

“When was that?” 

“About three quarters of an hour ago.” 

“What?” 

“It was your dad in that big car that passed.” 

“Shane!” 

“Yes, and all alone. There weren’t any more— 
but me, and I didn’t count because he thought I was 
one of the gang and gone where he’d sent the rest 
of it.” 

“Are you trying to drive me crazy?” 

“No danger of that. You’d be there now if you 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


weren’t the wonderful sport you are. No, your 
father got wind of you down there, and went to fetch 
you—like a mamma bear ambling off to look for a 
stolen cub. When they told him they couldn’t or 
wouldn’t produce you, he got cross and shot them up 
and came away. I was sticking round and he gath¬ 
ered me in with the rest.” 

“He took you for one of them.” 

“I don’t know. He just took me. He wasn’t 
stopping to sort the sheep from the goats.” 

“Good heavens! And when you had just rescued 
me!” 

“A little better than that. I got one or two of 
them when he unlimbered. He started the whole 
row—and I’ll hand it to him that he finished it.” 

“Who set the house afire?” 

“I did. ‘ It wasn’t a house, though. It was a 
hangar where there was stored about a million 
dollars’ worth of opium intended for distribution 
throughout the country.” 

“Did papa know about it?” 

“Papa did, and disapproved it. They kidnaped 
you to drag him in. He might have been dragged 
in if they’d been able to produce you.” 

Sharon gave several seconds to the assimilation of 
this statement. She must have absorbed it in its 
entirety, for she laid her hand on Shane’s arm and 
said, softly, “Then you not only saved me from the 
Lord knows what, but saved papa from getting 
mixed up in a horrid rotten business. And then he 
shot you.” 

“Can’t blame him for that. It was my own silly 
fault for rushing toward him with a gun in my hand. 
Lots of men have got killed by doing that thing and 

192 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

lots of others have got killed by not doing what your 
father did.” 

“What’s going to come of it?’’ Sharon asked. 

“It’s about all come, I should say. Your father 
and you and I are the only people living that know 
anything about it. Clamart has a theory that there 
were two separate mobs at work, a drug ring and 
a murder ring, or syndicate.” 

“That sounds like the Middle Ages.” 

“The Middle Ages were never like this. People 
didn’t assume that they were living in perfectly 
peaceful communities. Then Clamart actually be¬ 
lieves that there’s an organized syndicate that under¬ 
takes to kill any person who may be an insurmount¬ 
able obstacle to anybody who can pay the cash price 
for his removal. This used to be done in a small 
way when one went down into the stews of Venice 
and hired a bravo or slipped over to the Five Points 
in New York and hired a gangster. He insists 
that there has been formed a responsible agency for 
getting people assassinated. They’d only have to 
do three or four big jobs to declare an enormous 
dividend. They’ve been after Clamart and me be¬ 
cause they know we’re trying to bust up a drug 
ring. 

“You seem to have made a perfectly good start,” 
Sharon said. 

“We haven’t done so badly—for two independent 

workers. We were awfully afraid-” He 

checked himself suddenly. 

“Say it out,” said Sharon. “You were awfully 
afraid that papa might be in it.” 

“Not that—that he might be dragged into it 
some way. But after my interview with him when 

i93 



THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


I went to report your disappearance, I saw that I 
was wrong. If there’s any dragging to be done, 
he’ll do it himself. I don’t believe now that he 
came down here with any intention of committing 
himself to anything, but to stall your kidnaping in 
some way or other. He meant first to insist that 
you be delivered to him unharmed before talking 
business to them at all, and then he counted on his 
tremendous force of personality to get away with it. 
And he was prepared from the very start to fight 
his way out if that seemed to be the only exit. 

“It wouldn’t have been the first time,’’ Sharon 
said. 

“So I gathered from the way he went to it. A 
man like that seems vested with a sort of dominant 
force that lesser men fetch up on. They were 
around him like plains wolves around a bull buffalo, 
each waiting for the other to start it. He saw that 
and started it himself. There was something about 
him that was overpowering, immutable, and grim. 
Even when they pretended to think they’d got him 
where they wanted him, he ripped into them with a 
sort of stolid contempt. It was as if he’d been 
wearing an invulnerable armor and knew it, and 
they knew it, too. And he thought all the time that 
Clamart had sent him there to get him killed.” 

“What do you think?” Sharon asked 

“I don’t know what to think. I believe, though, 
that Clamart would rather have had him killed 
than had him join forces with this Don Quinto who 
w T as working to deluge the country with opium. 
Clamart is the sort of man who is a law unto him¬ 
self. He is fanatical about this thing. Perhaps 
that’s not just the word—he’s fatal about it.” 

194 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“I think,” said Sharon, “that you are a pretty 
fatal sort of person yourself.” 

Shane turned and looked at her face. He made 
again the comparison between this girl and Cynthia. 
“Does that dismay you?” 

“No; it thrills me. Why should it dismay me? 
Any more than war, or an attack by burglars or 
highwaymen. It’s what a man is for, I think.” 

“It seems to be what this one’s for. But I must 
give due credit to Olivant.” 

“What did Ollie do?” she asked, quickly. 

“He was keen enough to notice the scratches made 
by the nails in the heel of your slipper on the dance 
floor of the cabaret. They showed how you’d been 
tricked into slipping out the back way. I found 
them again on the front stoop of the house going 
in, and on the back stoop coming out. I guessed 
from that that you might have been taken to some 
place not far behind the premises. So I scouted 
around and saw the mast of that boat sticking up.” 

“What led you to come down here at all?” 

“That’s a long story. I had reason to think that 
there was something wrong about this place, and I 
put two and two together. How do you feel?” 

“All right. They weren’t rough when they found 
I had sense enough to do as I was told. They 
seemed to think I might be able to say a good word 
for them later. I thought, of course, it was a 
straight case of kidnaping for a ransom. I was 
more angry with myself for being such a little fool 
than with anybody else. Now I sha’n’t chatter any 
more. You must be terribly used up.” 

“Still a few kicks left in me,” Shane said, but 
desisted from further conversation. The car was 

195 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


running evenly and well. They had long since left 
the glow in the sky out of sight and presently turned 
in on the Lincoln Highway. Then, as the driving 
became less arduous, Sharon asked, suddenly. “Are 
you and Miss Cabot old friends?” 

“Not very. We met the year after the war. I’ve 
been an admirer—a suitor, in fact, but it’s no good.” 

“Why not?” 

“She’s a little afraid of me, I think. Considers 
me hard and too free a mixer. Not entirely respec¬ 
table, I’m afraid.” 

“Then she must be silly.” 

“Call it particular. She’s one of a good many 
like that, with a passing taste for artistic freedom 
for herself, but limiting the extent of it for other 
people. Like the woman who said, ‘I like to be 
primitive, but I can’t stand other people being primi¬ 
tive around me.’ ” 

“Are you very much in love with her?” 

Here was precisely the question that in the inter¬ 
vals of action Shane had been asking himself during 
the past forty-eight hours. He now considered it 
more definitely for a few seconds, then answered, 
“I want to marry her.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, for a lot of reasons. She appeals to me as a 
sort of complementary past. She’s got a lot that I 
lack and should want my wife to have. You see, 
I’m rather past the youthful romantic stage—if ever 
I was in it—and haven’t yet got to the middle-aged 
sentimentalism.” He smiled inwardly and to him¬ 
self. It had occurred to him how very chivalresque 
he must appear to Sharon, a young girl in a first 
flush of romanticism, and that here, despite the ter- 

196 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

I 

rific adventure through which she had passed, its 
terrors were immediately set aside in the presence of 
a romantic situation as lightly as if it had all been 
some blood-and-thunder melodrama that she had just 
witnessed with a new beau, who was now driving 
her home. One ought to be like that, Shane thought. 
What was the use of getting cold and clammy over 
what might have happened, so long as it had not 
happened, at least to oneself? He thought of the 
case of a young Yankee soldier sent to blighty for 
a wound similar to his own and to whom a fair 
hospital visitor had said, “That was a dreadfully 
narrow escape, my poor boy.” “Yes, ma’am, you 
bet,” answered the grinning lad. “Another half 
inch and she’d ’a’ missed me, and I’d ’a’ bin out there 
in the mud right now!” It all depended on the point 
of view. 

Cynthia in Sharon’s place would certainly have 
been sadly shaken, less at her own experience, per¬ 
haps, than at the thought of Shane’s summary slay¬ 
ing of her captors—two human souls sent to their 
swift accounting with no opportunity for repentance; 
Shane stalking them as if they had been lower ani¬ 
mals, wolves, or panthers. Cynthia would have 
said: “Why did you have to kill them? Couldn’t 
you have knocked them senseless?” 

Shane had thought of that himself and done his 
best to make the job a finished one. He was not so 
constituted that he could see the sense in giving men 
like these the chance it sit up presently and rub their 
heads and get him later. And the chances were all 
for their doing that thing, of horning in on Jed¬ 
burgh’s holocaust and spoiling it. Yet this very 
quality of reason was what Cynthia rebelled at in 

197 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

him because it conflicted with that quality of mercy 
which she held to be essential in the higher type of 
man. 

Well, there were two sides to it, of course, but as 
Shane saw it, their relativity was purely a matter 
of degree. He was willing to grant that, but doubted 
that Cynthia would have met him halfway. And 
here was Sharon quite ready to go blithely along 
with him. 

They stopped at an all-night supply station to take 
gasoline. Sharon, enveloped in the big driving coat 
that reached to her.feet, was snug and warm. But 
Shane was beginning to feel the chill, so he took the 
laprobe, a heavy Jager, threw it over his shoulders, 
and secured it in front with a brooch that Sharon 
gave him, a barpin of diamonds set in platinum. 
The high-powered little car was a closed one, like 
many in these days of clandestine promenades. 

With no man staying them they crossed the river, 
entered the city, and were presently rolling up Fifth 
Avenue, more innocently, no doubt, than most of the 
private traffic returning homeward in the dawn. 
Shane commented whimsically on this. 

“Funny thing, circumstance. It’s happened to me 
once or twice to start out for a perfectly proper little 
turn and get into all sorts of a mess, usually of some¬ 
body else’s doing, and that cost a lot of time and 
money and worry, with the off chance of scandal or 
legal procedure in the background, out of a frolic or 
somebody’s drunken inspiration or sheer repugnance 
at the thought of going home to bed. And now I 
start out loaded to the armpits with lethal and felo¬ 
nious weapons, and commit burglary, arson, and man¬ 
slaughter among other lesser crimes, and take you 

198 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

off a boat just as you’re outward bound for the Lord 
knows where, and get shot by your papa, and here 
we come gliding smoothly and serenely up to your 
house with nobody the wiser or apt to be the wiser, 
say ‘Good night . . . such a good time,’ as if we’d 
been to a charity ball or something. And papa can’t 
scold, because he sneaked off and went to the same 
party.” 

“You take it pretty lightly, Shane.” 

“I’m so relieved to get you safely home.” 

“Oh dear! And I haven’t even thanked you.” 

“I’m the one to feel thankful,” Shane said. “When 
a man takes a girl out anywhere, it’s his first duty 
to bring her safely home. If anything very bad 
had happened to you, I’d have wanted to get myself 
killed.” 

“You tried pretty hard as it was, and nearly suc¬ 
ceeded. I wonder if papa has got back? He must 
have had about an hour’s start of us.” 

“We’ll soon know. The chances are he left the 
car somewhere and caught a train.” 

Sharon did not immediately answer. It is doubt¬ 
ful if she felt much anxiety about this parent whom 
she had grown up regarding as an invulnerable auto¬ 
crat, rather more than mortal man. She had the 
feeling for him that small children have for a father 
strongly individualized, especially if he be harsh 
with others but kind to them. Jedburgh was to his 
daughter like an arbitrary genie, unamenable to the 
laws that govern the lives and actions of mankind. 
This night’s work further proved him to be such. 

Presently she said, as if to herself, “Miss Cabot 
would have to change her mind about you if she knew 
what you’ve done.” 


199 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane gave a short laugh. “Apt to regard me 
more askance than ever. With actual horror, in 
fact.” 

“But that’s unreasonable,” Sharon protested. 

“Not from her viewpoint. She believes in the 
sanctity of human life. I don’t, when it’s a vicious, 
devilish life. Better start it fresh, in that case. 
Well, here we are.” 

They drew up in front of the Jedburgh mansion. 
Sharon might have liked the' adventure concluded by 
some slight touch of sentiment, a tender word or 
even a caress. But Shane did not appear to find this 
gallantry in order. He was chivalrous in fact, but 
not in gesture. He helped her out and they went up 
to the imposing entrance, when, at the sound of their 
steps, the door was swung silently open by a footman, 
whose presence there at that hour gave Shane an 
immediate sense of relief. 

“Mr. Clamart, sir?” asked the man. 

“No. But it doesn’t matter. I must see Mr. Jed¬ 
burgh immediately.” 

“What name, sir?” 

“Mr. Emmet.” 

The footman went toward the study. Sharon was 
about to rush ahead of him, when Shane laid a de¬ 
taining hand on her arm. 

“I wish you’d go right up, Sharon.” 

“Why?” 

“Because it’s better that you shouldn’t hear our 
talk in case of being called upon to testify in court. 
We don’t know what may develop from this.” 

“But I want to know that he’s all right.” 

“If there’s anything wrong with him, I’ll promise 
to have you notified immediately.” 

200 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

She hesitated for a moment, then slipped out of his 
driving coat and moved toward the stairs. At the 
foot of them she turned, smiled, and blew him 
a kiss. 

“Thanks for saving me, Shane.” 

Shane bowed. The footman returned and, with a 
slightly disapproving look at the cloth hat that Shane 
had not removed, led the way to the study, the door 
of which he opened, announcing Mr. Emmet. Shane, 
entering, saw precisely the tableau so deeply and un¬ 
pleasantly etched on his visual memory—Jedburgh 
seated like a grim bulky joss behind his desk, heavy, 
inscrutable, showing not the slightest trace of strain 
or fatigue or any emotion, and in the capacious arm¬ 
chair at one corner Olivant in his velvet dressing 
gown, hair brushed and gleaming, hands neatly 
manicured. 

“That’s all, Higgins,” rumbled Jedburgh. “Go 
to bed.” 

“Thank you, sir.” The weary footman withdrew. 

“Leave the door open.” 

Jedburgh evidently was used to the Oriental pre¬ 
caution where one can look clear through for a con¬ 
siderable distance. He eyed Shane immovably, then 
said: “So you decided to bring back my daughter. 
Why don’t she come in?” 

“I asked her to go to her room,” Shane said. 
“She’s very tired, but otherwise none the worse for 
her experience.” 

“That’s good,” Jedburgh muttered, and added, 
somberly, “for both of you.” 

Shane sank wearily into a chair, then with no word 
of excuse or apology reached for the whisky decanter 
and poured himself a drink. Olivant looked curi- 

201 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

ously at the hat he had not removed, but made no 
comment. 

“Where’s the other feller—Clamart?” Jedburgh 
asked. 

“I don’t know,” Shane answered. “I haven’t seen 
or heard from him since yesterday morning at ten.” 

Jedburgh rolled the big cigar the width of his 
mouth to fetch up in its familiar socket at one corner. 

“Well, I can tell you, then. He’s gone where the 
bad men go.” 

“No, he hasn’t,” Shane answered. 

“Oh, hasn’t he? Well, I know better. Had it 
cornin’, too. Once a crook always a crook. He 
framed this thing from start to finish—and you 
helped.” 

Shane leaned forward a little and set down his 
glass. “You’re a liar, Jedburgh,” he said. 

The great Jedburgh took this statement unmoved. 
But one of Olivant’s carefully tended hands slipped 
into the pocket of his dressing gown. Shane ob¬ 
served the movement. Cynthia would have fled 
shrieking at sight of his face just then. 

“Keep it there, Olivant,” he said. “I wouldn’t 
much mind adding a fourth to my night’s list.” 

“What list?” demanded Jedburgh. 

“Yours and mine, down there by that big balloon 
shed. I’d already bumped off two and got Sharon 
when you showed up. Then went back in time to 
help you out.” 

Jedburgh glared at him. “They hollered: ‘Clam¬ 
art! Clamart!’ ” He scowled. “The feller said 
’twas Clamart got them two.” He leaned forward, 
elbows on the desk, big shoulders hunched to the ears. 
His pupils were like the tips of diamond drills. “It 


202 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

was Clamart who sent me down there—to get 
killed.” 

“Oh, was it?” said Shane, contemptuously. “Well, 
feeling as you did about him, it strikes me you were 
a damned fool to let yourself be sent.” 

“Don’t go too far, young feller.” The purple 
veins began to swell on Jedburgh’s neck and head. 
“It was Clamart sent me there—and Clamart was 
the last man I killed before I left the place.” 

“No, it wasn’t.” Shane pulled off his hat, expos¬ 
ing the wad of blood-soaked waste and a dark red 
zone where his hatband, tightly drawn, had dammed 
back the bleeding and kept it from trickling down 
until it dried. “It was myself you didn’t kill before 
you left the place. And you wouldn’t have left it at 
all if I hadn’t potted a couple of them and then 
rushed out like a fool to help you.” He rose, pulled 
on his hat again, and looked at Olivant. “That tip 
of yours about the opium did the business. I knew 
about the balloon shed down there. It’s all gone up 
in smoke.” He turned toward the door. “That’s 
about all.” 

“Say, hold on!” Jedburgh half rose, his big knuck¬ 
les on the desk. “Maybe I made a mistake-” 

“Oh, go to hell!” said Shane, wearily, and went 
out. 


203 



CHAPTER XV 


U TTER weariness descended on Shane like a 
leaden cloak as he climbed into his car and 
started off, unheeding Olivant’s call to him from the 
front door. Shane found himself suddenly and abso¬ 
lutely indifferent to the whole affair, and his part 
in it. 

The reaction from nervous strain and physical 
violence had set in the moment that Sharon had been 
safely deposited in her home, and Jedburgh had 
proven too much for the slipping cogs of his patience. 
The gross personality of the man and his coarse 
cocksureness had disgusted all of Shane’s finer feel¬ 
ings. He did not want Jedburgh’s gratitude or 
thanks. Here was a man apparently incapable of 
imagining any quality of sincere, unselfish good in 
anybody or anything. It was not with him a choice 
between believing motives to be honest or nefarious. 
He assumed the latter without bothering to consider 
the possibility of the former at all. Because of 
Clamart’s past criminal record he believed him crimi¬ 
nal still, and took the same for granted about Shane 
because he was Clamart’s friend and associate. 

Shane had no patience with minds that worked like 
that. He considered it to be the police official mind 
that seldom weighs the possibility of changed reason¬ 
ing and convictions. There was no use in trying to 
point out the merits of a painting to a color-blind per¬ 
son. Jedburgh’s attitude toward abstract honesty 
was no doubt that of the muddier type of libertine 

204 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

toward feminine virtue. Past experience had made 
him that way, if indeed he had ever been any other 
way. Shane was rather glad, on the whole, for this 
opportunity to insult him. Not many people dared 
insult Jedburgh and he needed it, though it was doubt¬ 
ful if it would do him any good. 

What Shane now most desired was his bath and 
bed. He garaged the car, went to his apartment, 
wallowed luxuriously in a hot tub, cleansed his wound, 
and, finding the tissue damage to be greater than he 
had thought, called up a doctor who was an intimate 
friend and who came immediately over and patched 
up the scalp. Shane told him that he had been at¬ 
tacked by footpads while walking through the Park, 
but had managed to drive them off. His friend 
accepted the statement for what he may have con¬ 
sidered it to be worth. He also dressed the knife 
cut on Shane’s hand, remarking dryly that if the 
two wounds had been simultaneously received, that 
of the hand had got a flying start in granulation. 

There were no calls from Clamart, rather to Shane’s 
surprise. He was too tired to telephone him, and, 
besides, felt thoroughly fed up on criminal discus¬ 
sions and pursuits. He might have been likened to 
a big-game hunter sated to surfeit after a sanguinary 
drive. 

Moreover, it seemed to Shane that all pressing 
danger was now removed. Clamart had told him 
that nothing so horrified the stealthy assassin or 
assassins as the same sort of mysterious Nemesis 
stalking in their midst and taking the offensive. It 
reversed the order of the game with duly accredited 
police authority, impressed the underworld as an un¬ 
fair encroachment on its time-dishonored preroga- 

205 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tives. The chances are it would all be laid to Clam- 
art’s count, and refresh the dread of him. Ten years 
before he had made vampires hard to find in Paris, 
working much in the same way. It was like a ghost, 
more recent and efficient, starting in to haunt another 
ghost of old-fashioned but respected methods, and 
the upstart attaining a finer attenuation of ghostli¬ 
ness that enabled him to play hob with the clumsy 
old specters, similia similibus . 

As a reagent to his glutted repletion, Shane’s 
thoughts turned with relief to Cynthia. No doubt 
this girl’s gentle nature was needed as the corrective 
to his own fiercer and in many ways savage one. 
Most times he was peaceful enough, but at all times 
he was a mental savage, like the average small boy 
or domestic tomcat. His nature required a mental 
antidote, like Cynthia’s ethical convictions. But the 
deuce of it was, Shane reflected sadly, the antidote 
did not seem to be in any need of him. 

He awoke delightfully refreshed at noon. Still 
no word from Clamart, and still the lingering echo 
of that soothing influence he had gone to sleep with, 
the image of Cynthia. The need of her was very 
strong. For the first time in their acquaintanceship, 
Shane found it to be a purely spiritual need. Also, 
for the first time it occurred to Shane that, after all, 
a man did not have to be married to a woman to 
get this good from her. It could be supplied with¬ 
out straining the claims of friendship. Men like him¬ 
self really asked too much of women—or at least of 
any one woman. This was a new and beautiful 
thought and he decided to tell Cynthia about it, but 
reservedly. After all, she was right about him. His 
argument that they were complementary natures was 

206 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

correct in part, but not in whole. He stimulated her 
mind and she soothed his, but the proportions of 
stimulant and sedative were not invariably just. 

It was also required of polite custom that, after 
rescuing a girl and killing her captors and calling her 
father most truthfully a liar and telling him where 
to go, a well-bred gentleman ought at least to inquire 
after her state of health. She would probably still 
be sleeping, so he asked for Olivant and got a cheer¬ 
ful greeting. This chamberlain informed him that 
Sharon had just awakened and was talking with her 
father, with whom she had exchanged some few re¬ 
marks after Shane had left. She seemed none the 
worse for her experience. 

“I say, Emmet, you were a bit rough on us last 
night, you know.” 

“Not on you, Olivant, beyond advising you not to 
draw,” 

“I was reaching for the weed that cheers but does 
not asphyxiate, like the poppy you combusted. But 
you spat out at the rajah like a mad cat.” 

“That stands. I didn’t like his speech or manner 
or anything about him. Don’t yet and never shall.” 

“He doesn’t feel that way about you.” 

“Well, it ’ll be time enough to worry about that 
when he apologizes to Clamart and me. Please tell 
Miss Jedburgh I inquired after her. And tell that 
old joss if the .lingering members of the mob want 
to think it was all Clamart, it would be a fine idea 
to let ’em go on thinking it. Put the fear of Satan 
in em. 

“All right. Don’t you want to speak to Sharon?” 

“Not just now, thanks. Good-by.” 

Like most men whose work is of their own devis- 

207 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

ing, Shane’s hours of industry were elastic, and he 
possessed the faculty of crowding a great deal of 
result into a short space of time, without which gift 
a man had better keep out of journalism. There 
were, however, certain daily contributions contracted 
for, and he made it a point to keep a little ahead of 
these in case of some unavoidable interruption. 

He went now into his studio and spent two hours 
of concentrated effort, and this seemed to lead back 
his ideas to a better normalcy. For the soothing of 
ruffled nerves there is no such ironing board as work, 
especially that of a natural vocational sort. When 
thus resolved to toil, Shane “sported his oak” in a 
manner that would have been impossible to persons 
of. less nervous control. He simply ignored all bells 
and other summons. If the apartment under his had 
got afire, it is doubtful if he would have permitted 
himself to be interrupted until dislodged by the heat. 
He was radically “out.” 

At half past four he rang for a messenger, dis¬ 
patched some work, then dressed with care, plastered 
his thick wavy hair in a manner to conceal his scalp 
wound from the casual eye, and went to Cynthia’s 
studio. He had made the appointment before the 
clearing of his brain for his task. He found her 
alone, engaged in brewing tea. She appeared to 
have been recently annoyed at something, for her 
face was flushed and her eyes had an angry sparkle 
as she greeted him. 

“Why didn’t you tell me that Sharon Jedburgh 
had been returned to her home?” 

“Didn’t want to discuss it over the phone,” Shane 
said. “You can never tell who may get at these 
switchboard operators.” 


208 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“You might at least have hinted at it. Given her 
initials or something. Even Mr. Clamart didn’t 
know.” 

“Has he called?” 

“He called me up to ask if I had any news of you. 
You’ll catch it when he gets hold of you.” 

“I’m purposely postponing that treat. Teach him 
to go off leaving word for me to stick around, as if 
I were his Watson or Chinaman or something.” 

“It’s not very considerate of Leontine or me, your 
leaving us in suspense.” 

“I’m sorry.” Shane took off his coat and hat. 
He was not entirely pleased at being brushed with 
caustic when he had come for balm. “The telephone 
inspires me with dislike and distrust. Makes me 
snappish to talk over it.” 

“I’ve noticed that. Your voice usually sounds as 
if you were giving orders to proceed with the execu¬ 
tion. Is that necessary?” 

Shane’s discontent deepened. There was a tone in 
Cynthia’s voice that he did not remember having 
noticed in any of her former commentaries on his 
failings. It had previously been plaintive or quietly 
regretful or timid, perhaps, in noting them. But 
there was now a sort of briskness to its accent, as 
of .some vested right to criticize. It struck Shane 
suddenly that it was a sort of married way of speak¬ 
ing, almost a conjugal inflection. The idea startled 
while it amused him. To examine it more fully he 
drew her on by saying, indifferently: “It’s a habit of 
mine, like word economy. How and when did 
you learn that she had been restored to her doting 
parent?” 

Cynthia’s flush deepened. It was becoming and 

209 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

gave her pretty Puritan face a sort of pugnacious 
provocativeness. “Do you think flippancy quite in 
order? I saw her driving up Fifth Avenue with her 
father about an hour ago, as I was coming out of an 
auction. She was smiling and bowing to somebody 
as if nothing had happened her. You all seem 
to take it very calmly, I must say. Suppose you 
stop patting your hair and tell me what you know 
about it.” 

“Can do,” Shane answered, cheerfully. He fol¬ 
lowed her into the studio and they seated themselves 
on opposite sides of the tea table. Here, in the glare 
of the big north window, Cynthia for the first time 
discovered his collodion-covered wound. 

“Mercy! What’s happened you, now?” She 
whitened. 

“A bullet ricochetted from my turret. It was a 
mistake of identity. I was taken for Clamart despite 
my glowing youth and beauty.” 

“Will you please be serious. Your idea of humor 
is in bad taste.” 

“Well, then, to save words and temper, I may 
briefly state that, acting on a tip from Olivant, Jed¬ 
burgh’s secretary, I ran down on the Jersey coast 
last evening and found Sharon aboard a cruising 
motor boat. I managed to get her safely to my car, 
and we beat it out for home.” 

“That’s how you got your wound?” 

“No. Just before leaving I was shot at by a man 
who took me for Clamart.” 

“Was he there, too?” 

“Not to my knowledge. Perhaps he guessed my 
errand and was trying to create a diversion some¬ 
where else.” And he added, truthfully enough, 

210 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“Not a hand was raised to prevent my taking Sharon 
away.” 

Cynthia did not look as unqualifiedly pleased as 
might have been expected, considering the anxiety- 
on Sharon’s account she claimed to have suffered. 
She poured the tea in silence, a little line drawn in 
the middle of her forehead. Then, handing Shane 
his cup, she asked, “Was it that place where the 
attack was made on us?” 

Shane nodded. “That was the hang-out of opium 
smugglers, and the hangar built of bamboo that the 
stuff was stored in. I burned it up. About a million 
dollars’ worth, Olivant said.” 

“What had Olivant to do with it?” 

“They tried to bribe him to use his influence with 
Jedburgh to get him in the ring. They wanted not 
only his money, but his knowledge and power. More 
that, I guess. He balked, so they stole Sharon when 
they got the chance. Somebody whisked her out and 
into a car. They seized the opportunity. She 
thought it was a raid and that I was rushing her out.” 

“And leaving the rest of us to our fate.” 

“I had brought her and the princess there, and 
she knew that the princess, as the wife of a diplomat, 
was not subject to arrest. It doesn’t matter what 
she thought. She went, and got herself nabbed. 
When Olivant told me about this opium scheme, I 
thought of the carrier pigeon and the code and 
that thug and the hangar. So I went down there 
and tracked her to the creek. The gang was off 
somewhere.” 

“Then you burned the place up?” 

“Yes, and jumped in the car and beat it with 
Sharon. We got back home about five.” 


211 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“This morning?” 

Shane nodded, smiling. He had managed rather 
well, he thought, to give Cynthia a brief of all that 
had happened, without shocking her or telling any 
lies. He was getting quite adept at suppressing a 
part of the truth. 

Cynthia looked down at the cup she was stirring. 
“You are tremendously keen and clever, Shane. But 
you’ve got to admit that you’ve been phenomenally 
lucky, too. First a bullet is stopped by a sketchbook, 
then a knife-thrust misses you in the dark, and now 
a bullet grazes your head. That sort of thing can’t 
go on.” 

“Let’s hope it’s over,” Shane said. 

“I’m afraid it’s not, though. Clamart has been 
urging me to leave town—go back to Boston. I am 
willing to do so”—she gave him that clear-eyed, 
level look that had been the first characteristic to 
attract him, and added, slowly—“if you will come 
with me.” Her color deepened. 

Shane, taken utterly aback, could achieve no more 
than a startled, “What, Cynthia?” 

She nodded, then, looking at him steadily and 
searchingly, said, slowly, “I’ve decided to accept 
your repeated proposals that I should marry you, 
Shane dear. I know that I could never feel for any 
man as I do for you. This fearful danger has shown 
me how much I care, and how deeply. And I’m 
tremendously ambitious for your future. You are 
wasting your talent, your genius, perhaps, in this 
work as a cartoonist. You might be a great por¬ 
traitist. Can’t we go to Boston and be quietly mar¬ 
ried and sail for France or Italy, and get away from 
all this horrid, stealthy, dangerous life?” 


212 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Shane found himself in an outrageous turmoil. 
Here was Cynthia agreeing to his periodically re¬ 
peated proposals of marriage just when he had so 
cheerfully decided that he could be entirely content 
with an affectionate but platonic friendship. But 
now as he looked at her flushed and lovely face he 
was not so sure. Cynthia was intensely desirable 
and possessed for him in all ways a powerful attrac¬ 
tion. It seemed to Shane that he really wanted her 
in all ways, but he wanted her to want him in all 
ways, too. And about this he could not be sure. 

Very much bewildered, he reached for her hand 
and raised it to his lips. Then holding it firmly 
clasped, he said: “You are the only woman I have 
ever wanted to marry, Cynthia dear. I think, 
though, that your consent is mostly due to the desire 
to save me from a danger that no longer exists, and 
your ambition to see me become the great painter 
that I haven’t the natural gift to be. My ability is 
limited. I can draw as well as anybody, but you 
know yourself that my color sense is crude.’’ 

“Crude is just the word, Shane. You’ve never 
tried hard to develop it. You could do so with study 
and practice. You’ve never really worked at any¬ 
thing—merely enjoyed the use of a natural gift.” 

“ ‘Enjoyed’ also is exact,” Shane said, smiling. 
“It’s furnished me a lot of interest and done some 
good, I hope, and incidentally supplied me all the 
money I’ve ever had or could possibly earn. I 
couldn’t make a living as a portrait painter.” 

“You could in time. And the present does not 
matter. I’ve got plenty for us both. There’s an¬ 
other thing, too, Shane, though I hate to speak about 
it. I detest the kind of life you lead. Mixing with 

213 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


all sorts of people and entertaining them. Wasting 
yourself on worthless folk and consuming your splen¬ 
did vitality in irregular hours and amusements. I 
want to give you something better than all that, my 
dear.” She emphasized this statement with a look 
that stirred Shane as nothing about her had ever 
done before. 

He rose. It was an instinctive gesture, like that of 
a man who feels some sort of soft thralldom envelop¬ 
ing his free limbs and freer mental activity. Cyn¬ 
thia, as though to avoid being taken at a disadvan¬ 
tage, rose also. They stood facing each other, Shane 
neither resisting nor unresisting, Cynthia evidently 
in the grip of some sort of emotion new to her, yet 
against which she had no desire to summon an oppos¬ 
ing force. A flood of tender womanhood was pour¬ 
ing from her soft gray eyes, making them misty. 

“I know that I am asking you to give up an awful 
lot, Shane dear. But I don’t think you will miss it 
when you find how much I have to give in return.” 

“This, for instance?” Shane stepped in front of 
her, took her yielding body in his arms, crushed his 
lips against her offered ones, then presently loosed 
her a little and looked searchingly into her eyes. 

“Yes—that, and more, Shane. All the sweet, 
gentle, lovable things. Aren’t they better than what 
you have now?” 

“Of course they are,” Shane muttered. “The ques¬ 
tion is if I am.” 

“You are. If you weren’t really a good man, I 
couldn’t love you as I do.” 

“How about that hard streak in me?” 

“That’s the result of circumstance. You’ll get 
over it. The life you’ve led is enough to harden 

214 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

anybody. I’m sure you must have been a dear little 
boy. And I’m even more sure that you would be 
a dear father to a dear little boy of your own.” She 
pressed her forehead against his shoulder. 

Shane kissed her again. It was a rather solemn 
and profoundly virtuous kiss. The way a man kisses 
his wife when she has paid him some distinguished 
compliment and he feels infused with high endeavor 
and a resolve to live up to it. This sort of exemplary 
wooing was to Shane in the nature of an initiation to 
a new school of love. He was not proof against 
it. He felt actually married—and a bit of a fraud. 

“You are giving me credit for qualities I don’t 
possess, Cynthia.” 

“What sort, dear?” She loosed herself gently. 
They stood facing each other, hands dropped but 
still clinging. 

“Your own sort. The Puritan sort—because you 
really are a sweet Puritan maid. More so than ever, 
after this experience. I don’t see how I could make 
a success of living the simple, righteous life with its 
soft and gentle interests. Especially on your fortune. 
And if I’d been destined for a painter, I’d be one now 
instead of what I am sometimes flatteringly called— 
‘the clever cartoonist of the day, the political impor¬ 
tance of whose work can scarcely be estimated’—and 
all that sort of rot.” 

“It isn’t rot, Shane dear. You are important. I 
realize that fully. It’s a very wonderful thing to be 
at the top of any profession. I’m not pleading for 
a nobler art, but for a nobler man.” 

“What if the result were to be merely a noble 
lazy man?” 

“You could never be lazy. Nor self-indulgent. 

215 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


You would make a success of whatever you at¬ 
tempted. And I’m beginning to believe that I’ve 
been wrong in thinking you hard. It’s a sort of 
mental attitude you like to take and the result of 
past rough adventures and the war. I think that I 
could manage to change all that.” She looked up at 
him with her misty eyes and a little smile. “Don’t 
you think so, yourself?” 

“I don’t know what to think,” Shane answered, 
with perfect truth. 

“You are used to violent things,” Cynthia said, 
“but your nature is not violent. You are kind. You 
told me yourself one day that you loved birds and 
never could find pleasure in killing things.” 

“That’s true enough,” Shane muttered. 

“Then why persist in thinking of yourself as other 
than you are?” 

“I don’t. You are the one that has always said I 
have a merciless streak in me. I don’t think I have. 
I’m merely practical about certain things.” 

His mind reverted suddenly to the small morning 
hours of that day. His tremendous sense of visuali¬ 
zation reproduced the scene of his stalk of Sharon’s 
captors, the stealthy approach, the feline swing and 
crushing blow, and the fatal happenings that swiftly 
followed. Cynthia’s soft allurements were for the 
moment obliterated. She, raising her head to look 
fondly in his face, was held instantly in a sort of 
frozen fascination, like a mother thrush that might 
look up from the nest it was engaged in building to 
see the predatory glare of a shrike when it had 
thought to take something from the bill of its mate. 

Shane did not notice her in the brief fraction of a 
second that had been enough to show her this dread- 

216 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

ful death mask. His vision lasted for a space scarcely 
measurable in terms of time. Her frightened gasp 
banished it. But the damage had been done. Cyn¬ 
thia drew back with a shuddering gasp. 

“There it is again! What makes you look like 
that? I can’t bear it-’’ 

Shane blinked, then reached for her hand. Cyn¬ 
thia recoiled. Shane stared at her, astonished. He 
was not conscious of his change of expression. He 
thought that she must have read his mind. 

“Well, there it is,’’ he said, hopelessly. He let 
fall his arm. 

“I was right, after all.” Cynthia’s voice was a 
wail. “Oh, Shane, what awful thing were you think¬ 
ing about?” 

“Oh, something that—that what you just said 
made me think of. It was all right enough-” 

“It was horrible! Shane, tell me something. 
Have you”—she choked a little—“have you—killed 
anybody-” 

“Why—yes.” Shane spoke reluctantly. “There 
was a shindy of sorts down there last night and 
several of ’em got theirs. It just had to be done, 
my dear-” 

“Don’t!” She shrank down into her chair. 

“You mustn’t take it that way, Cynthia. It was 
a gang of murderers and opium smugglers and 
they’d got Sharon-” 

“That horrible man’s daughter. Did you kill— 
for her?” 

“I did,” said Shane, composedly, “and I’m glad 
of it. If I hadn’t, there’s no telling what might have 
happened to her—and she was in my care. What 
price the lives of men like that?” 

21 y 







THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Cynthia gripped the arms of her chair. She stared 
at him with a sort of fury. “And you come to me 
fresh from such an act and—and take me in your 
arms! Oh, I was right! I was right about you from 
the first! Go, please. I never want to see you 
again.” 

“But, Cynthia, be reasonable!” 

“Don’t talk. Go!” 

Shane went. 


218 


CHAPTER XVI 


S HANE laid a course for Gramercy Park. Since 
left-handed compliments on his exploit appeared 
to be in order, he might as well listen to Clamart’s 
criticism. 

He had also a few leading questions of his own 
to ask. Jedburgh was convinced that Clamart had 
tried deliberately to send him to his death, and it 
looked to Shane as if Jedburgh was right. This 
did not seem to Shane a very worthy play. Jed¬ 
burgh might be somewhat in the nature of a pest, 
but as long as he kept out of criminal practice he 
had a right to live unmolested. There had been a 
good deal of outraged virtue about Shane’s anger 
with Jedburgh. It is most vexing to rescue a damsel 
from bandits, then bring aid and succor to her father, 
get shot in the head by him, and later accused of 
complicity with the ill doers. But on more mature 
reflection, Shane did not blame Jedburgh so much. 
He had been sent down there by Clamart, with whom 
he knew Shane to be working, and hot on the heels 
of Jedburgh’s brilliant victory, here came Shane 
fetching Sharon home as if in acknowledgment of 
defeat and the desire to stay Jedburgh’s Olympian 
wrath. 

As for Cynthia, the narrowness of that escape 
struck through Shane with such a scare as no bullets 
pattering off his capital piece could ever have ap¬ 
proached. He had been within one count of losing 
his precious liberty for a life term. He thought, 

219 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


now, with a shudder, of what must have been entailed 
by such captivity. The exchange of his free and 
interesting activities and amusing, energetic sort of 
work for an entourage composed of Cynthia’s blame¬ 
less, uninspiring set, day after day, of sabbatical 
calm with all functions timed by rhythmic hours, po¬ 
lite gatherings to be approached with dread, and 
precious periods consumed in the formal exchange of 
intellectual opinions on the world’s progress that he 
now was in the habit of devouring and digesting in 
brief but succinct reading in the intervals of action. 
An elegant studio daily swept and garnished, with 
every article in its appointed place, and in which he 
must force himself perfunctorily to acquire merit in 
an art for which he felt himself to be insufficiently 
equipped. Dressing at the summons of a gong, re¬ 
quired to bring his appetite to the bidding of routine, 
curbing his impetuous conversations to the entertain¬ 
ment of complacent folk to whom a stark opinion 
was in the nature of an affront—all of this, that 
Cynthia seemed to regard in the light of a 
spiritual uplift for him, spelled intellectual death to 
Shane. 

And he had escaped it by no more than the flitting 
expression of his face. He had wished to avoid 
shocking her fine sensibilities by any hint of the raw 
episode through which he had just passed. It was 
not that he desired to profit by her false valuation 
of him, because he was not actually in the habit of 
shooting and slung-shotting people and burning up 
storehouses of smuggled narcotic. But since his war 
face had betrayed him and she had questioned him 
directly, he could not lie about it. 

All of this was a new experience to Shane. Several 


220 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

times he had slipped gracefully or awkwardly 
through the encircling nets of wicked sirens, but this 
was the first time he could remember having been en- 
glamoured through the purest of lofty motives and 
nearly led into the sheltered inclosure . . . like a 
wild mustang of naturally good but horsy habits into 
the corral of some gentle ranch girl who had decoyed 
him from the open places that she might protect 
him from the rigors of climate and famine and 
timber and plains wolves . . . and incidentally 
enjoy the service of his strength and high-spiritedness 
under the control of her light but guiding hand. 
Shane’s flanks quivered at the thought of how nearly 
Cynthia had come to the accomplishment of this. 

Thus reflecting, Clamart looked a little better to 
him. This was, of course, reactionary. After being 
with the ex-citizen of the underworld and listening 
to Clamartian parables, Cynthia’s social atmosphere 
might seem less thick. 

The old but pretty house on the little square was 
under no espionage that Shane could discover as he 
approached and pressed the bell. Ling Foo admitted 
him, saying that the master was in his study and 
would he go up. Shane found Clamart at his desk, 
reading an evening paper. Clamart looked up at 
him and laughed. 

“This is rich. Listen: ‘The heavy, suffocating 
smoke from the burning bamboo of which the frame¬ 
work of the hangar was built produced a curious 
vertigo on those enveloped in its fumes while work¬ 
ing to save the house. The men were completely 
overcome and had to be carried from the spot, when 
they speedily recovered. They described the effect 
of the asphyxiation as singularly pleasant, though 

221 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAM ART 


followed by nausea. . . I say, Shane, you gave 
them a costly jag.” 

“How do you know I gave the party?” Shane 
asked. 

“Heard all about it from Olivant. He and Jed¬ 
burgh called here an hour ago. Our clever young 
friend did all the talking. Then I told Jedburgh 
just why I’d sent him down there.” 

“Well, why did you?” Shane asked. 

“For several reasons. The most important was 
to create a diversion. To distract attention from 
yourself.” 

“What made you think I’d mixed in?” 

“It seemed the natural deduction. Leffy tried to 
kill you at the cabin, and you had watched the car¬ 
rier pigeon pitch down behind that house. Then you 
thought you saw Leffy in the alley by the entrance 
of the cabaret. We knew that they were trying to 
drag Jedburgh into this opium business, so it looked 
all of a piece. Then you telephoned here that you 
were going out of town. Of course I understood 
your feeling that there wasn’t any time to lose. I’d 
have gone myself, but I was busy on something else 
that I’d turned up.” 

“What did you tell Jedburgh?” 

“What I’ve just told you. I though he might as 
well have the whole story, whether he chose to be¬ 
lieve it or not. I said that it was my opinion they’d 
taken his daughter there and that it seemed to me 
as if the quickest way for him to get her back would 
be to make some sort of a dicker with Don Quinto 
and get him to run down there with him.” 

Shane considered this, then asked, “What did you 
think would really happen, Frank?” 

222 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

‘‘Well, I counted a lot on just what has happened, 
up to a certain point. I stacked a heap on your ability 
to handle a job like that, and hoped that you would 
have managed the girl’s rescue by the time Jedburgh 
and Don Quinto reached the place. After that it 
would be up to Jedburgh. But I had a lot of con¬ 
fidence in his being able to take care of his old hide, 
too. I knew him for a hardened adventurer, like 
Baron Rosenthal, but not hampered by the good old 
baron’s heart. There’s shrewdness and cunning in 
that fat head of his, and this rare type of man is as 
quick and tough and savage as a wild boar. And even 
if they managed to kill him, I couldn’t see how that 
was going to be any great loss to society in general 
and this country in particular. 

“I had you right,” Shane muttered. 

“Of course you did. And I had you right, too. I 
knew you weren’t the man to be let down by any silly 
squeamishness. But I must say, Shane, I’d never 
hoped for any such brilliant result as you pulled off 
between you.” 

“Then you approve of what I did?” Shane asked. 

“You bet. Couldn’t have been handled better. 
It was perfect. And you showed a flash of positive 
genius in suggesting to Olivant that the whole job 
be left to my account. If one’s got a reputation, one 
might as well work it for all it’s worth. This will 
throw an awful scare into them. Thugs like that 
are superstitious and hot hero worshipers—of their 
idea of a hero. They haven’t much respect for the 
police because the police represent a big elaborate 
organization with everything at its disposal. They 
'expect the police to beat them in the long run. But 
for an independent worker to sail in and tear them 

223 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

all to pieces in the first round with no help or pub¬ 
licity shoots them full of a mixture of superstitious 
awe and helpless uncertainty.” 

Shane nodded. He was beginning to feel better. 
This man’s sincere approval was higher praise than 
any mere perfunctory words. He had fully expected 
Clamart to find fault with some part of his procedure 
—the burning of all that opium, or the suttee of its 
potential exploiters. That part of it had been an 
act of impulse. 

“You couldn’t possibly have done better,” Clam¬ 
art continued. “What you may have sacrificed in 
cremating these victims of Jedburgh’s Jovian wrath 
you more than compensated by the value of its fright¬ 
fulness. All we need now is to follow it up by an¬ 
other smashing blow and our work will be completed 
for the time. And I’d counted on months and maybe 
years of effort.” 

“Another blow. . . ?” 

“At the heart. You and Jedburgh have trimmed 
most of the big tentacles off the octopus. It’s hiding 
in its cloud of sepia now, but I’ve smelled it out. 
One more whack ought to make it cuttlefish to feed 
canary birds. It’s a sacred obligation.” Clamart’s 
steely eyes scintillated. “You see, Shane, our posi¬ 
tion and power are unique for the stamping out of 
two fearful, threatened ills—narcotic poisoning on a 
gigantic scale and commercial assassination. Let’s 
go to it. Jedburgh is with us, now, though there’s 
nothing much he can do. But Olivant might. That 
boy has brains.” 

“Don’t you think you’re letting yourself get car¬ 
ried away, Frank?” 

“No, I don’t. It’s up to us. You see, we are the 

224 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

only ones that can do this job. The police in the 
nature of their offices can’t take the initiative. They 
can’t go out like cattle ranchers and kill wolves just 
because they know them to be wolves.” 

Shane could not refrain from saying, “And a jolly 
good thing for you they can’t, Frank.” 

Clamart was not offended. “Well, I never was 
a wolf. I was a good watchdog gone wrong from 
cruel and unfair treatment. Most crooks say that, 
of course, but the ones that went about their criminal 
work unarmed, as I did, and always on the scheme 
that if my skill as a yegg wasn’t enough to save my 
pelt without killing anybody, then I’d pay the price, 
even if it meant getting killed, myself. Besides, I’ve 
got a decade of straight living behind me, and in the 
face of many a temptation.” 

“I’m sorry, Frank. I apologize.” 

“No need. What you say is true. The police are 
right about it, too. A good many criminals retire, 
but scarcely any of them actually reform. A man 
gets harder as he gets older, until senile change sets 
in. My own line of conduct is not due to any re¬ 
morse or regret for my past, but the result of a 
changed idea about humanity, and a sort of acknowl¬ 
edgment of benefits received. My slate was wiped 
clean. Otherwise, I’d probably be a cracksman now, 
or dead. I’m not out for other cracksmen or other 
jailbirds. I’m after a gang of professional mur¬ 
derers. But I wouldn’t mind collecting a few of 
these skunks that are trying to poison us wholesale 
in this country. Suppress the Medicis with the 
Borgias, so to speak.” 

“Are there many left?” Shane asked. 

“Plenty of small fry and franc-tireurs, black- 

225 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

mailers, woman terrorizers and such trash. The 
country’s system has got to absorb a certain amount 
of toxin. But there are still some vestiges of the 
fabric we’ve torn into in such ungentlemanly fashion, 
and I’d rather like to start them on their way. I’ll 
need some help.’’ 

“All right,” said Shane, resignedly. “I’m on.” 

“There’s not much in it for you, Shane. I don’t 
see how you’re going to be able to report any of 
this. We’d be under bond and getting tried for the 
rest of our lives and, however it turned out, nobody 
would ever believe in the honesty of our motives, or 
at least mine. They’d say it was just another case 
of pirates falling out.” 

“Oh, well,” said Shane, “we’ve started it and 
might as well finish. Do we take the offensive again?” 

“First, last and always, the offensive,” Clamart 
said. “In love or war, business, politics, diplomacy, 
and the arts of peace there is but one set of tactics 
for success—the offensive.” 

“When do we strike?” 

“To-morrow night, I think. Perhaps a little later. 
There’s a meeting to-night to choose a successor 
to the deceased president of the murder syndicate. 
He was the cultured gentleman that had the mistaken 
assurance to tell Jedburgh that he wasn’t going to 
leave that place alive unless he signed on.” 

“What do you know about him?” Shane asked. 

“Quite a lot. Or at least, Leontine does. He’s a 
chemist named Humboldt who made a good deal of 
money at one time by smuggling in dyes in a very in¬ 
genious manner. He bought sponges, cleansed them, 
saturated them in a solution of the stuff he wanted to 
smuggle, and dried them. Then all he had to do was 

226 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

to bring them in and squeeze them out in a fresh 
solution, add his reagent, and precipitate the prin¬ 
ciple desired. But a bright young assistant in his 
employ got on to what he was doing. It was a good 
graft because the synthetic dyes are built up of 
colorless molecules that can be graded into the differ¬ 
ent beautiful shades desired by building up the mole¬ 
cule step by step. When he got through he could 
always sell the sponges as a by-product.” 

“Chemistry,” said Shane, “must offer a wonderful 
field for illegal traffic.” 

“Well, you can’t blame it on chemistry because 
that science is the very root and branch and pith and 
marrow of all creative knowledge. But it is poison 
and antidote combined. It creates and it detects. 
Then our ingenious devil turned his attention to sub¬ 
tle toxins, mostly gaseous. He was working at a gas 
with which to charge unfermented grape juice in a 
way to give it the apparent properties of champagne, 
when something went wrong again and he killed a 
lot of people without intending to. What he was 
striving for was a physiological substitute for al¬ 
cohol, that would yet not give the chemical reactions 
of the tests for alcohol nor produce any marked 
toxic effects. But he got discouraged and then de¬ 
cided to take advantage of the error and go in for 
scientific poisoning on a commercial basis. That 
suggested to his mind the idea of a regularly or¬ 
ganized murder board, or syndicate. I imagine he 
never intended to employ any means as crude as 
lethal weapons or any other agency unable to baffle 
all detection. He was a Medici pure and simple, but 
the trouble was he couldn’t handle some of his 
Borgias. If Jedburgh hadn’t acted on a swift initia- 

227 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

tive, the chances are that nobody would ever have 
known what killed him.” 

“Jedburgh,” said Shane, “appears to have ren¬ 
dered a distinguished service to society at large.” 

“That strong offensive I just mentioned,” Clam- 
art said. “But even with Humboldt, probably not 
his real name, removed, it is still a ticklish business. 
I don’t know what sort of a successor he may have 
left or what sort of an invisible enemy we may 
find ourselves up against. We had a sample of it 
when that odorless gas was dropped down the 
chimney.” 

“Then all this business has been a combination of 
the murder syndicate and Don Quinto’s scheme.” 

“Yes. Don Quinto had such a big thing by the 
tail that they threw in together. Don Quinto fur¬ 
nished the marketable goods, and Humboldt was 
to smooth the way for its distribution by removing 
the active obstacles as they arose. But they both 
lacked ready cash to finance it and that was where 
Jedburgh came in. They guessed wrong on Jed¬ 
burgh, though. They thought he had more greed 
and less courage. They thought they could prod 
him along like a pig to market, but he turned sud¬ 
denly like a wild boar and slashed them to pieces. 
That slow, silent manner of his fooled them. It 
was like whacking off a big, rusty, mud-caked “dud.” 

“Did he apologize?” Shane asked. 

Clamart laughed. “He growled out something 
about having got me wrong and it nearly choked him. 
That was on your account, not mine. Nothing that 
I might do could ever change that old bird’s theory 
of once a crook always a crook. He thinks I’m play¬ 
ing some deep game and he probably believes that 

228 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

you spilled it for me when you burned up that big 
cache of opium.” 

Shane did not answer. He was uncomfortably 
conscious of having entertained somewhere in the 
back of his mind these same sinister doubts. When 
with Clamart, Shane gave his unqualified belief and 
confidence. Away from him, he could not seem to 
keep the insinuating tentacles of misgiving from 
writhing into his thought. He left Clamart pres¬ 
ently and returned to his apartment; then, seized 
by a revulsion of feeling against opium smugglers 
and assassins and their self-appointed destroyers, 
and still smarting from Cynthia’s injustice, he sank 
into a Morris chair and gave himself up to what was 
for him an entirely new indulgence—a few moments 
of depressed and gloomy retrospect. 

Shane regretted profoundly ever having got mixed 
up at all in the rotten tangle of murderous events. 
He did not particularly object to fatal circumstances, 
whether on a big scale like the war or on a smaller 
one where his active part was under due authority 
and official orders. But he hated this thing of franc - 
tireur, of trying to achieve some purpose for the 
benefit of humanity in frank violation of its estab¬ 
lished laws. He was neither a reformed crook, like 
Clamart, nor a ruthless commercial operator, like 
Jedburgh. More than that, he was no unquestion¬ 
ing and obedient vassal to carry out the orders of a 
superior, as Olivant was quite content to do. Shane 
felt resentfully that he had been let into hauling 
the chestnuts out of the fire willy-nilly, and had badly 
singed his paws in doing so. His rescue of Sharon 
had been justifiable even though the method of pro¬ 
cedure was unlawful. But his high-handed act of 

229 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


impulse in bundling his and Jedburgh’s victims into 
the hangar, then burning up the place, was a different 
matter and one that now struck Shane as an insane 
performance. He began to regret it. What was 
Clamart’s approval worth? And then suddenly 
Shane found himself wondering if Clamart had really 
approved it. 

Turning this in his mind, it seemed to him that 
Clamart’s commendatory words had lacked the ring 
of sincerity. The disquieting impression grew. It 
became augmented by other uncertainties about 
Clamart. Shane reviewed these as they had im¬ 
pressed him previously as they had arisen, but when 
his mind was in a state of excitation. Clamart had 
shown no great surprise nor any regret at all at 
Coding’s death. Clamart had appeared to be expect¬ 
ing a similar attack upon himself. Clamart, by go¬ 
ing to the cabaret, then requesting Shane to join him 
there, had appeared to invite attack or, rather more 
than that, to set in motion an offensive of his own. 
This had struck Shane at the time as singular. The 
result had been almost fatal to Shane, though Clam¬ 
art had killed his man. Then Clamart had incited 
Jedburgh to go down to the hangar, but he had not 
told Shane of his suspicion that Sharon might be 
there. 

The most singular episode in the chain of events 
was that of Leffy’s being struck down for no appar¬ 
ent reason that Shane could guess. Shane had not 
tried to determine a reason for this before. But it 
now occurred to him that it might have been more 
than merely to satisfy some personal grudge or get 
rid of an accomplice whose vice threatened a danger 
to the mob and who, having served his purpose, it 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

had been thought better to remove. But it now 
looked to Shane as though some deeper object were 
involved, that there was treachery among these slay¬ 
ers and smugglers, and that some master hand was 
guiding the affair from a background impenetrable to 
any of them. 

Then Shane thought of Jedburgh’s obstinate re¬ 
fusal to put any faith at all in Clamart. Jedburgh 
knew men. He was not hampered by any of Shane’s 
idealism. Shane’s doubts deepened. His depression 
began to envelop him like a black shroud. He rose 
and began to pace up and down in an effort to throw 
it off. One of two conditions must be the case. 
Either Clamart was absolutely fanatical in his devas¬ 
tating hatred of crime and criminals and would stop 
at nothing for their destruction, or else he was still a 
king of the underworld—czar and autocrat—and of 
an authority so dreaded as to be able summarily to 
dispose of any of his operatives who seemed to him 
to be clogs in the machine. 

It was all too much for Shane. It confused his 
mind. Clamart was so absolutely convincing in his 
words yet so appallingly ruthless in his actions. 
Shane found himself unable to conceive of a great 
power for good employing such measures as Clamart 
pursued. There was that elevator boy at Coding’s 
apartment. Clamart had seemed on the point of 
ordering his death, might, indeed, have done so, but 
for Leontine’s suggestion. 

Shane began to think that Cynthia was right, 
that Jedburgh might be right. This thought sug¬ 
gested Sharon, the one bright spot in the whole 
sanguinary affair. 

It struck him then that he had not treated Sharon 

231 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


very well. He did not want her to feel herself in¬ 
cluded in the hostility with which he had parted from 
her father. Acting on a sudden impulse, he picked up 
his telephone and called Jedburgh’s house. Olivant 
answered. 

“Is Miss Jedburgh at home?” Shane asked. 

“Yes,” Olivant answered. “Very much so to her 
life saver. Or at least she was.” 

“Then ask her if she’ll take a turn with me in my 
car for about an hour, will you, Olivant? That is, 
if she’ll be let.” 

“No fear. Her father now considers you to be a 
sort of Perseus—or at least he would if he’d ever 
heard of the fellow. I’ll tell her.” 


232 


CHAPTER XVII 


S HANE drove up Fifth Avenue, reflecting on the 
peculiar breathlessness of the sequence of events 
of these last few days. It struck him that if one 
could hold such a pace for about a year, it would be 
to crowd a very busy lifetime into that space in which 
so many people can scarcely be said to live at all. 

His own career had been fairly rich in such, and 
that often made him feel an infinitely older man than 
his actual age. But only in experience. Physically 
and mentally these strenuous activities had kept him 
youthful. He was like a wholesomely adventurous 
boy and he had never yet got over that sort of 
juvenile attitude toward terrific episodes that makes 
a sort of game of what more sober and reflective 
minds would view as mortal crises. 

Curiously enough, the very qualities in him that 
Cynthia chose to consider hard and ruthless were 
really the reverse of that in Shanej because he could 
not feel them in that way. His nature was boyish, 
primitive, or aboriginal, so that he felt and acted a 
good deal as might a boy or savage. In the case of 
most highly civilized folk it would require the rally¬ 
ing of a tremendous amount of moral force to take 
such an offensive-defensive as Shane had done the 
night before, yet a genial, kindly, laughter-loving 
Polynesian would pick up his knobstick and brain a 
pair of lurking feudal enemies with no compunction 
at all. Or, not to step out of one’s own race and 
civilization for example, there were plenty of cases 

233 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


in the Civil War where boys not yet or scarcely 
in their teens got down the old patch rifle and 
potted Union soldiers at safe range and slipped off 
into the corn or cane, entirely content with their 
exploit. 

But Cynthia was spiritually unable to get this point 
of view. She was no faint-heart nor yet the martyr 
sort, and had she lived two hundred years before she 
would, no doubt, have fired steadily enough and with 
intent to kill on painted savages attacking her log 
cabin. But in the intervals of action she would have 
prayed passionately to be forgiven for having taken 
a human life, and for the soul that at any future 
moment she might feel herself obliged to send to its 
Creator. 

Shane drew up in front of the Jedburgh house, 
when Sharon came out immediately. She looked as 
blithe and bonny as though all events of the previous 
two days had been stricken from her mental and 
physical records and she had been doing what actually 
she hoped she was about to do—take a spin around 
the Bronx with a new, fascinating beau. 

“How’s your head?” she asked. 

“Nor’-nor’-east, half east,” said Shane, squinting 
up the avenue. 

He helped her in. “When Ollie gave me your 
message I’d made up my mind never to speak to you 
again,” Sharon said. “But I’ve changed it.” 

“I’m glad of that,” said Shane, “because I thought 
that your father might have done the first for you.” 

“He had. But he changed it, too, when I told him 
a few things. You talked to him like a member of 
the family, Shane. It did him good.” 

234 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“So did it me. Let’s consider that incident as 
closed.” 

“All right, if this opens another. You see, Shane, 
you can’t protect an impressionable young girl from 
the stiletto of a mad princess and rescue her a few 
hours later from a band of bloody pirates and then 
say to her father, ‘Here’s your daughter, damn you, 
and see that you take better care of her,’ then 
walk out of her young life with no more than a 
telephone call to ask about her health. It isn’t 
done.” 

“It isn’t being done,” said Shane. “I’m not taking 
you to ride out of politeness, though.” 

“Repentance, then?” 

“There’s no time for that thing these busy days. 
Call it friendliness.” 

“Why not say brotherly consideration—or some¬ 
thing just as horrid. No, you’re taking me because 
you think that I’m a good sport and you’re begin¬ 
ning to like me a little. Am I right?” 

“Yes, so far. I might add that in some ways I’m 
a temperamental artist and can’t help but feel that 
we understand each other pretty well.” 

“Of course. But you’d understand me a little 
better if you were to stop thinking of me as such a 
very young girl. I’m not precocious, either. I’m 
grown up. I was nearly there when I met you, and 
that finished it. You launched me, and what I’d 
like to be sure of now is that you’re not going to turn 
me adrift. You see, Shane, you’re under a tremen¬ 
dous obligation to me.” 

This statement was the reverse of what Shane had 
expected to hear. Instead of being thanked for serv¬ 
ice rendered, here was he calmly informed that the 

235 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


indebtedness was on the other side. It tickled his 
sense of paradox. 

“That would be the Oriental aspect of it,” he 
admitted. 

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? I’m under no obligation 
to you for having rescued me any more than if you’d 
been a life buoy that floated past when I was drown¬ 
ing. It was in the nature of things—your sort of 
nature—because you’re that sort of thing. But you 
are under obligation to me because you saved me, 
and in doing that assumed a new responsibility.” 

Shane was much amused. “In what direction does 
my duty now lie?” he asked. 

“That’s for you to decide,” Sharon said, demurely, 
“but, of course, you’ll have to know more about my 
circumstances, to be able to decide. This is a very 
good start. To carry on with it you’ll have to make 
friends with papa. He will meet you more than 
halfway. He wanted to last night, but he’s got very 
rusty at that sort of thing, and, besides, you didn’t 
give him time.” 

“That’s so,” Shane admitted. 

“Now, Shane, I’ll tell you about papa. He’s just 
as bad as he can be, I’m afraid, but it’s because he 
has never had reason to believe that there was any 
other but one good person in the world, and he did 
not have her with him long enough. That was my 
mother. She was the daughter of a poor Scotch min¬ 
ister, and ran away with him to be married. She 
died when I was born. So you really can’t blame 
poor papa.” 

“No,” Shane agreed. “In that case I don’t blame 
him.” 

“He’s like a coconut,” Sharon said. “Rough and 

236 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

hard and hairy on the outside, but with some real 
milk of human kindness if you can get at it.” 

“Can you get at it?” Shane asked. 

“Not as I might wish. But I’m sure it’s there. I 
don’t think that his going down there after me was 
entirely due to rage.” 

“Let’s hope it wasn’t. Perhaps I’ve got him 
wrong. You really can’t tell much about a man like 
your father.” 

Sharon looked pleased. “He can’t tell much 
about himself, Shane. Besides, men change. Every¬ 
body changes . . . like Mr. Clamart.” 

“Oh . . . so you know about him?” 

“Papa told me. But whatever he was once, he’s a 
good man now. I can feel those things. He’s the 
sort of man I should want to marry.” 

“You would, would you?” 

“I said the sort of man. And it’s highly necessary 
for me to marry a good man, Shane, because if I 
married a bad one I’d certainly turn bad myself.” 

“Why not reform the sinner?” Shane asked. 

“That can’t be done, can it?” Sharon asked. 

“I don’t believe so,” Shane admitted, “but it’s a 
nice idea and the basis of a good many stories.” 

“Well, then, if it happens the man was never more 
than temporarily off his track. That happens lots of 
times, of course. Like Mr. Clamart. But I’m no 
hydraulic jack or wrecking crane. I’d leave that 
sort of thing to your dear friend Miss Cabot.” She 
shot him a sidelong look. Shane frowned. 

“Miss Cabot would be apt to tackle it by absent 
treatment.” 

Sharon smiled. “I wish she’d give you some . . . 
and keep on giving it. That wouldn’t hurt you any. 

237 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


You see, Shane, I’m awfully afraid that she means 
» to marry you when she gets ready.” 

“I’m not,” Shane answered, shortly. 

Sharon stirred a little at his side, a sort of flutter. 
“Well, I am. She means to marry you. She wouldn’t 
stay here if she didn’t. Miss Cabot has quite de¬ 
cided to take you on her leash and put a muzzle and 
a pink bow on you and parade you down Beacon 
Street as a perfectly docile Boston bull. I read it 
in her face.” 

“And what,” Shane asked, irritated, but amused, 
“do you propose to do about it?” 

“Just what I’m doing,” Sharon answered, 
promptly. “Take measures to prevent your capture. 
I’m warning you that if you grab the pretty piece 
of chicken when she offers it, you’ll find a leash 
snapped on your collar.” 

Shane began to wonder if his mind was such an 
' open book that any girl could read it. Here was the 
second time in the same afternoon that one was listen¬ 
ing in on his thought with her little wireless re¬ 
ceiver. “What if that fails?” he asked. 

“Then I’ll tease you and make you snarly. That 
might scare her off. She’d shock easily. If the worst 
came to the worst, I’d tell her about what you did 
last night. That would finish her. She would have 
a fit.” 

“You seem to take it smoothly enough. Why 
shouldn’t Miss Cabot?” 

“Because she’s about two hundred years old-fash¬ 
ioned, and I’m about two thousand. Girls thought 
and felt the way I do about 88 B.c. Besides, you 
didn’t do your trench raid for her. That always 
makes a difference. You know, Shane, you belong 

238 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

really to my epoch. If you came to me all goried 
up from slaughtering objectionable people, I would 
cry, “Did you have a pleasant evening, dear?” 

“By gum! I believe you would. And what if I 
came to you all perfumed up from serenading some 
objectionable person?” he laughed. “The two pas¬ 
times are apt to go together, you know.” 

“Well ... I think I’d feel that there was some¬ 
thing faulty in my own technic. Then I’d worm it 
out of you who that hussy was and go and get her. 
Feed her to the crocodiles and sit on the bank and 
watch the banquet. You see, Shane, what really 
counts is the difference between the ages of a man’s 
and woman’s spiritual development.” 

Shane nodded. “I get you. It would be a mis¬ 
alliance for a Miocene man to marry a Pleistocene 
girl . . . and a horror for him to marry a Recent 
girl. Perhaps you are right. It may be that under 
our skins we belong to all sorts of different periods. 
That would seem to account for the variation of our 
viewpoints. You could scarcely expect a gentleman 
whose last earthly functions had been during the 
Palaeozoic epoch to get along smoothly with a lady 
who had made her previous curtain bow in the late 
Cainozoic. Well, that wonderful thought makes me 
feel a little better about myself.” 

“It makes allowance for Miss Cabot, too,” Sharon 
agreed. “She ought to marry a Plymouth Rock, 
like herself, and not a gamecock.” 

“You love her, don’t you,” Shane said. 

“About as much as you do, really. But if there 
was any prospect of marrying you, myself, I’d be 
good enough sport not to say all this. Of course 
I quite understand how you feel about it. You are 

239 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


like the English people I grew up with. You would 
think an awful lot about the social position of your 
wife, less for your sake than your children’s. But 
you must know lots of girls who have that and who 
wouldn’t mind mixing a little wild thyme with the 
sweet lavender. Speaking of wild times, are you 
going to keep what happened last night a secret?” 

“Yes, for the present at least. We may report 
the business personally to the attorney-general, later. 
Of course, your father is free to do as he likes 
about it.” 

“He will do as you say, I think. He seems to 
have a new idea about you and Clamart. The 
countess is sweet. Why don’t you marry her?” 

“Several reasons. She’s in love with Clamart, I 
think. But since you take such a kindly interest in 
my matrimonial future, I’ll tell you this—Cynthia 
Cabot is not for me.” 

“What. . . . !” 

“She told me about two hours ago that she 
wished never to see me again. Barring accidents, 
she sha’n’t.” 

“Oh . . . Shane!” There was an ecstatic tone in 
Sharon’s voice. “What happened?” 

“She appeared to guess that this low-life tyke had 
been ratting in the sewer. She asked me point-blank 
if I’d scragged anybody, and when I admitted that 
I had she sent me on my way. I don’t know why 
she asked me that. You’d have thought she saw 
a jinn looking out from behind my eyes.” 

“Perhaps she did, Shane. Your eyes were pretty 
lurid even in the dark. But where they thrilled me 
they horrified her. It’s just as I said. Are you very 
much cut up about it?” 


240 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“No. That’s the curious part. I’ve felt the hope¬ 
lessness of any perfect understanding from the first. 
I thought we might remain dear friends, though.” 

“She wanted you more than I’d thought,” Sharon’s 
voice had lost all its flippancy. “And to think I’ve 
been talking like such a fool. Of course I never 
guessed.” 

“You don’t need to guess. You’ve got a private 
line. But you see it makes me feel a little solemn. 
The death of the little love that never was. That’s 
the only sort of death there really is, I think. What 
never was.” 

Sharon burst suddenly into tears. Shane was 
startled and astonished. He said to himself, 
“Nerves.” He blamed himself for having been so 
foolish as not to realize that any girl was bound to 
get some sort of a reaction from an adventure like 
that of the night before. 

“Sharon. . . he said, gently. 

The gust of tears shut off instantly. It was as if 
they had glided through a shower from one of the 
big black clouds scurrying over the treetops of the 
Bronx Park that they were threading. Sharon raised 
her face and looked at him with swimming eyes. 

“I want you to kiss me, Shane. Just once. Then 
drive home.” 

Shane kissed her, just once, then drove home. 


241 


CHAPTER XVIII 


S HANE left Sharon feeling rather like a man who, 
in the midst of a sanguinary campaign where 
hostile forces are arrayed on every side, strays un¬ 
awares into an exquisite rose garden. > 

There in sheer relief from stress and strain he 
might give himself up for some precious moments to 
the soft glamour of the place and even stoop to 
bury his lips in the petals of the sweetest, fresh¬ 
est rose with no desire to purloin it. Why pluck 
it from its stem to carry it away into strife and 
turmoil or to suffer neglect in the distraction of harsh 
preoccupations ? 

There was something of this sort in Shane’s atti¬ 
tude toward Sharon. It did not seem to him that his 
sensational life was of the sort to ask a girl like that 
to share. It held too many rough, irregular incidents 
and episodes. As Cynthia had pointed out, Shane 
was actually a young man of irregular habits, and 
although these were far from being depraved or even 
self-indulgent to any harmful degree, they were yet 
not married habits, or at least what married habits 
ought to be. 

It occurred to him then that possibly Sharon might 
have no more desire for these same well-ordered 
married habits than had he, himself, and that they 
might go along together as married lovers exploring 
in. company the bizarre and sui generis and even 
freakish phases of things and people without re¬ 
proaches on Sharon’s part for exposures to occa- 

242 


l the return of frank clamart 

sional rough contacts, or discontent on Shane’s for 
being forbidden them. He had never got this aspect 
of matrimony, but regarded it always from the angle 
of a settling down, like the sediment drawn from a 
centrifugal machine—the active principle, perhaps, 
but no longer in solution. And it was the very fact of 
being one of many component parts rotating around 
the other ingredients that spelled life for Shane. He 
did not want to be decanted as a unit, even as a family 
unit. 

But it did not seem to him that with Sharon this 
would be apt to happen until it came in the natural 
order of things and with a sort of tacit mutual 
consent. They would be more apt to whirl together 
in the sunshine, to fly together through high air or 
swim in the vortices of a clear and sparkling sea. 
He had an instinct that with her the mating season 
would be infinitely protracted and always fraught 
with fresh delights. It would not be a sudden with¬ 
drawal from swift swirling currents into a placid 
backwater. There was to Sharon a guaranty of 
honeymoon as if she were a nymph or demigoddess 
of whose domestic life there are no records. 

All of this was rather a confused impression that 
Shane brought back with him to his apartment. It 
cleared gradually and became more concrete as he 
recalled what Sharon had said about the necessity 
for lovers, mates, belonging to the same era of evo¬ 
lution. In this respect it seemed to Shane that he 
and Sharon were contemporaries who had stepped 
from a fairly savage epoch into this, in some re¬ 
spects more savage. This idea grew as the hours 
passed. It seemed to warrant her spontaneous, in¬ 
stinctive selection of him as a mate, and as Shane 

243 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

thought of her more as a woman than as an impul¬ 
sive girl, to justify his rather shamefaced but steadily 
increasing desire for herself. 

For the next few days his professional work kept 
him fully occupied. He saw Clamart once or twice 
at the Players Club, but only to exchange casual 
friendly greetings. He thought that Clamart eyed 
him rather sharply, seemed on the point of offering 
some warning or proposal. Shane did not know 
whether or not Clamart still considered the criminal 
factions to be further smashed or discouraged. He 
did not wish to think about them. The destruction 
of the hangar had been complete and there was some 
comment in the press about the incinerated remains 
found inside it, the conclusion being that there had 
been an explosion of inflammable material and a suf¬ 
focation of the victims before they had been able to 
get out. Their identity was undetermined. Shane 
reasoned that even if there were active members left, 
whether drug smugglers or killers, they would have 
no means of knowing just what happened. Or, sus¬ 
pecting Clamart’s hand from the finding of the two 
bodies by the creek, their awe for that sinister 
renegade must be augmented. 

Then came a note from Sharon asking him for 
dinner at her father’s house. Shane was loath to 
accept because of his feeling for Jedburgh, but Oli¬ 
vant, evidently anticipating his declining of the Invi¬ 
tation, dropped in to see him before Shane had 
answered it. 

“I hope you’ll come for dinner, Emmet,” Olivant 
said. “Sharon would be awfully hurt if you don’t. 
Can’t you bury the hatchet for her sake?” 

“I don’t know, Olivant,” Shane answered. “I’ve 

244 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

never been much of a forgiver when a raw insult has 
been served me. You like Jedburgh, but I don’t.” 

“I’ve got every reason to like him,” Olivant an¬ 
swered, U but, more than that, I exempt him from the 
usual requirements of polite behavior. Actually, 
Jedburgh is the only man who ever seemed to find 
some use in me, and that’s worth a lot. Then I’m 
devoted to Sharon. She likes me, I think, but that’s 
all. She’s really in love with you, old chap. She’s 
as good as told me so.” 

“Sharon is a sweet, lovely girl,” Shane said, “but 
I’m too used to my free way of living to take advan¬ 
tage of a romantic situation. It wouldn’t be fair 
to her.” 

“You got her out of a horrid mess,” Olivant said, 
“and put them both under lasting obligation.” 

“Well,” said Shane, “I’m mighty glad to have 
come through clean, with no further complications.” 

“I wonder if you have,” said Olivant, musingly. 
“Now don’t get your back up, Emmet, when I ask 
you man to man if you’re absolutely convinced your¬ 
self of Clamart’s squareness.” 

“Absolutely,” Shane answered, “so far as the ulti¬ 
mate object is concerned. I think he’s fanatical in 
his hatred of crime and criminals. I do wish, though, 
that he’d work under due legal authority and not 
alone. Or he might continue to work alone, but with 
the proper police authorization. The trouble is they 
wouldn’t give it to him here. They haven’t ruled 
off his dossier as they did in France. He got out of 
this country with too many outstanding accounts.” 

“He sure proposes to make the world safe for the 
police,” Olivant said, and as he spoke Shane’s tele¬ 
phone bell jingled. 


245 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane picked up the instrument when, such was 
the clearness of the connection, that the voice at the 
other end was audible to Olivant. 

“This is the manager of the Actors Hostel speak¬ 
ing. We have here a guest who says that he is an 
old friend of yours and wants to know if you 
could drop in to see him. He is an actor, Barrett 
Demarest.” 

Shane glanced at Olivant, who nodded. 

“What’s the matter with Mr. Demarest,” Shane 
asked. 

“General breakdown, I should say, sir. Call it 
poverty and past misfortune. We are not a hospital, 
but merely a small private charity for helping mem¬ 
bers of the theatrical profession through temporary 
distress. But I should say that Mr. Demarest would 
be unable to work for some time to come.” 

“All right,” said Shane, briefly. “I’ll drop in and 
see him within the hour.” He asked for and was 
given the number—that of a side street in the thir¬ 
ties, then looked at Olivant. 

“Poor old Barrett Demarest!” he said. “You 
know him, of course.” 

“Yes, everybody knows Barrett. One of the old 
guard. Too bad.” 

“I saw him about a month ago,” said Shane, “and 
helped him a little. ’Fraid he’s done for. Another 
victim to the poppy, I should say. Know anything 
about this place ?” He looked a little puzzled. “I’ve 
heard of it, but can’t remember when or where.” 

Olivant shook his head. “No, I’ll go round there 
with you, if you like,” said he. “We were all fond 
of Barrett. Last time I saw him, he did a skit in the 
Lambs’ gambols.” 

.246 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Shane took his hat and coat and stick. “Well let’s 
see what’s to be done. Can’t ignore an SOS like 
that.” 

The two went out. Olivant was glad of an oppor¬ 
tunity to improve a growing friendship with Shane, 
whom he had always admired. Also he was kind and 
willing to do his part toward helping an old Broad¬ 
way acquaintance in distress. It was about five 
o’clock and they both were free. Shane also was 
pleased at Olivant’s evidence of a kind heart. His 
opinion of this young man had changed. The ad¬ 
dress was only five or six blocks away, so that they 
walked down Fifth Avenue, then across town, facing 
a raw, gusty wind that struck across the Hudson out 
of dark, heavy masses of cloud. The house proved 
to be an old one, in no way distinguished from those 
on either side, of dingy brownstone, with a low, squat 
stoop and little iron balcony. Beside the door was 
a bronze plate on which was rather inconspicuously 
lettered “Actors Hostel.” The lower windows were 
fitted with iron grills, and there was a basement door 
of the same sort. Olivant glanced at it with a faint 
smile of recognition. 

“I remember this dump. Dave Redfield’s old 
gambling house. Closed up years ago when they 
made war on the get-poor-quick joints.” 

“That’s right,” said Shane. “This whole neigh¬ 
borhood was shady.” He glanced across the street, 
and as he did so noticed, without remarking, a flashily 
dressed woman entering what might have been a 
shabby boarding house. The woman appeared to be 
blond and painted, but something about her carriage 
struck Shane as not unfamiliar. At that moment the 
door was opened in answer to his ring and the two 

247 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


men found themselves confronted by a swarthy, com¬ 
pact youth whose long hair and spectacles suggested 
the student. His loose black clothes were shiny from 
wear, but neat enough, and when he spoke his diction 
was that of a foreigner who has been at Dains to learn 
an accurate English. 

“Mr. Emmet?” he asked, and stood aside for them 
to enter. 

“Yes,” said Shane, “and Mr. Olivant.” He sniffed 
the rather heavy stuffy air of the interior. Its odor 
suggested a mixture of Russian cigarettes and cheap 
perfume and also a faint smell of some sort of 
disinfectant. 

“Mr. Demarest sleeps most of the time,” said the 
young man, and looked at Shane with eyebrows 
slightly lifted and a significant expression. “I am 
afraid that we shall have to rouse him. It is not 
always very easy.” 

“I get you,” Shane answered. “Whose charity is 
this Hostel?” 

“The upkeep of it is subscribed to by several of 
the more successful and retired members of the pro¬ 
fession. Its object is merely to tide over temporary 
distress. We cannot keep a guest for more than a 
week and Mr. Demarest has been here for that 
length of time. He really ought to be placed in some 
institution. This way, gentlemen.” 

He led the way to the stairs. The house appeared 
to be clean, but its atmosphere affected Shane as 
though it were charged with the vitiated breaths and 
bodily emanations of many squalid people, like a 
stuffy clinic in some old barrack of a city hospital, or 
the location of low-priced quacks with a large un¬ 
clean clientele. And yet there was no distinctly dis- 

248 


THE return of frank clam art 

agreeable odor. It was rather a closeness, the lack 
of living air or any sort of ventilation. 

The manager led them up the creaky stairs, two 
flights, then down a narrow hall that was dimly 
lighted by a gas jet. He rapped at a door and, re¬ 
ceiving no answer, opened it and stood aside with a 
low voiced, “Come in please, gentlemen.” 

Shane and Olivant entered. The room was almost 
dark, though a faint glimmer of the daylight that 
remained outside came in through the slits of the 
closed sheet-iron blinds, that were like those with 
which the windows of French houses are provided. 
In the far corner of the room was a single bed on 
which appeared to be the figure of a man. As Shane 
and Olivant moved toward it the manager said, 
quietly. “I’ll give you some light,” and stepped out¬ 
side. The door swung to behind him and there came 
a sharp, metallic click that told its own sinister story. 

Shane knew then, for the next few seconds, the 
frantic desperation of the human or animal victim 
caught up in a fatal coil. He flung himself against 
the door. It was solid and the knob had been re¬ 
moved. He rushed to a window and found the iron 
blind secured by a heavy padlock. A pallid flare 
of light shone through a narrow, half-opened tran¬ 
som over the door. There was a slight thumping 
noise outside, as if a chair had been placed against 
the door. Then, as Shane glared up at the transom, 
the upper half of the manager’s face appeared in the 
aperture. A hand was thrust in for an inch or two. 
Its fingers clutched a small, spherical flask of thin 
glass, like a chemist’s bell jar. Shane, guessing the 
contents of this, froze in his tracks, commending his 
soul to the hazard of eternity. 

249 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


The voice of the manager, faintly mocking, said: 
“You know, perhaps, what this container holds. You 
were with Clamart that night.’ 7 

Shane did not answer. Olivant, beside the bed, 
stared dumbly from Shane to the pallid upper seg¬ 
ment of the face at the transom. The glass vessel 
was withdrawn. Shane, breathing heavily and the 
sweat bursting from every pore, sank into a shabby, 
upholstered armchair. Olivant sat down upon the 
edge of the bed, that he had already discovered to be 
empty. 

Shane pulled himself together. “Well,” he barked 
between his set teeth, “why don’t you chuck it and 
get it over with ?” 

“Not yet, Mr. Emmet, if you are quiet. Perhaps 
not at all. Our object is not revenge, but money. 
Clamart and Jedburgh have ruined us between them. 
They are both rich men and they have got to pay.” 

“How can they pay,” Shane asked, “and why 
should they pay for us?” 

“They can pay in clean bank notes of small de¬ 
nomination. Our price is two hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars. And it must be paid before to-morrow noon. 
You two are their friends and associates, and they 
got you into this. I shall ask you each to write a 
letter explaining your position and advising them 
that unless this money is paid to our messenger be¬ 
fore noon of to-morrow you will both be dead an 
hour later.” 

“And if it should be paid?” Shane asked. 

“Then you will be free to leave as soon as you 
recover from the effects of a narcotic given you. 
There is nothing to fear. I was a student of Pro¬ 
fessor Humboldt and got into this affair through my 

250 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

devotion to him. But I have nothing personally 
against either of you. We need this money to com¬ 
pensate our losses through the burning of the balloon 
hangar by Jedburgh or Clamart. Which one of them 
did that?” He looked at Shane. 

“Suppose you blame it on me,” Shane answered, 
shortly. 

“Stick it on us both,” said Olivant. “Since we’re 
the goats, why not make the most of us? But your 
life-insurance proposition sounds like bunk to me, 
brother. Mr. Jedburgh and Clamart are no pikers 
and might be willing to come across, but they are 
both sadly lacking in a faith in human nature. They 
wouldn’t believe in a million years that once you got 
the money you would take a chance on letting us off.” 

“Couldn’t you manage to deliver our persons?” 
Shane asked. 

“That is what I advocated, but my comrades re¬ 
fuse to take the risk. We are to have a meeting in 
about an hour, when I shall urge it again. We are 
all too afraid of Clamart. We regard him as an 
almost superhuman agency. I am afraid that you 
will have to take your chance on getting the money 
delivered to us here.” 

“A darned slim chance,” said Olivant. 

“Clamart was the rock on which we split,” the 
manager continued. “Our first mistake was in not 
offering him enough, a third share, or even half. 
Our next great blunder was in approaching Jedburgh 
at all. But the most fatal piece of stupidity was in 
kidnaping his daughter. He blamed that on Clamart, 
so to save himself Clamart had to smash us. And 
smash us he did. That’s what comes of trying to 
work with fools.” 


251 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


“From the bitterness with which you speak,” said 
Olivant, “one might think that you were describing 
the collapse of some splendid commercial enterprise. 
You could never really have got away with it, you 
know.” 

“Pardon me, but the most difficult part of it was 
done. The rest should have been easy if handled 
w'ith any sense. This place was only one of about 
five hundred distributing agencies differently dis¬ 
guised. But this was the headquarters of a group 
organized to deal with dangerous enemies.” 

Shane nodded. So Clamart, that astute ex-crimi- 
nal, had been right. And he, Shane, was now not 
far removed from paying the final price of his de¬ 
struction of the hangar, the depot of supply for all 
of these substations organized to tear down into the 
slough the health and sanity of a great common¬ 
wealth. For a moment Shane felt that if it had not 
been for the gallant, debonnaire Olivant this price 
would not have been too great. 

“Was Barrett Demarest one of your clients?” he 
asked. 

“No,” said the manager. “He came here in all 
good faith because he was sick and destitute. We 
received a number of actors like that, for the sake 
of the fence they offered. Some, of course, were 
opium habitues. Many could not carry on without 
the drug. As I see it, that is a man’s own affair. 
An important factor of his personal liberty.” 

“The same old bunk,” said Shane, wearily. 
“You’ve got your nerve to defend it, with us waiting 
for our euthanasia.” 

“Ah, but you brought it on yourselves by inter¬ 
fering with that very liberty. For my part, there 

252 


the return of frank clamart 

has never been but one thing in the life of a man that 
really counts, and that is liberty. Perhaps now you 
may agree with me.” 

“My word,” Olivant sighed, “but you are the 
cheerful young assassin!” 

“I have to my credit the removal of a number of 
lesser tyrants,” was the modest answer. “From my 
viewpoint, whoever seeks to curtail liberty loses his 
right to live. I speak, of course, in the broader 
sense.” 

“Then you think we really ought to get snuffed 
out,” said Shane. 

“I honestly do. All reformers are clogs to the 
cause of liberty when they get to passing prohibitive 
laws. Society must work out its own salvation. I 
discovered through Mr. Demarest that you were old 
friends of his, then had you watched with the pur¬ 
pose of finding you together when I telephoned. I 
hoped that you would both come. But in your case 
it was purely a commercial measure. For that reason 
I am going to advocate risking the delivery of your 
persons against the ransom money. But I doubt if I 
succeed.” 

“Well,” said Olivant, “let's hope you do, for all 
our sakes, because you certainly won’t get it other¬ 
wise.” And then, to Shane’s astonishment, he added, 
casually: “Emmet is Mr. Jedburgh’s prospective 
son-in-law, you know, and the old boy is strong for 
him. But while he might consider that a nice live 
son-in-law is worth a hundred thousand dollars, 
his business principles would tell him that a dead one 
isn’t worth a damn.” 

“I shall present that for consideration,” said the 
manager. “I must now call a comrade to relieve me 


253 


* 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

here. I warn you, gentlemen, that the slightest sus¬ 
picious act of yours will be instantly fatal. A quick 
and painless ending.” 

He turned and gave some order in a foreign 
tongue. His head disappeared from the aperture in 
the transom. The upper segment of a face replaced 
it, eyes dark and luminous and widely spaced, with 
prominent cheek bones and a broad, low forehead. 
The wild eyes stared down at them with a sort of 
frightened, fascinated glare. They did not waver 
when Olivant waved his hand in a flippant semisalute. 


254 


CHAPTER XIX 


ABOUT an hour passed. The two young men 
jLjl smoked and exchanged occasional remarks in 
the lifeless fashion of men who feel inwardly con¬ 
vinced that death is hovering close. 

Neither doubted for a moment Jedburgh’s or 
Clamart’s willingness to do his best. But though 
they might find the ransom money readily enough 
and pay it to whatever messenger was sent, such was 
Shane’s opinion of the unemotional mercilessness of 
their captors that he really did not believe that they 
would think it worth while to take any chances in 
their getaway. Certainly two dead men who might 
remain some days undiscovered in an abandoned house 
were safer than two live ones. And Olivant agreed 
with Shane that Clamart, knowing the sort of crimi¬ 
nals with whom he had to deal, would not risk any 
attempt to shadow the messenger. He would pre¬ 
fer letting the remnants of the mob make good their 
escape and taking the slim chance of their keeping 
the agreement to spare Shane and Olivant, than to 
risk the precipitation of their doom. 

Shane told Olivant briefly the whole history of the 
affair and how he had been drawn into it. 

“Looks as if my boss were right about Clamart’s 
always having wanted the lion’s share,” said Olivant. 

“Well now, Olivant,” Shane answered, “I can’t 
yet believe that Frank is crooked. For one thing, I 
don’t think he’d have let me in for it if he had been. 
If he kept them guessing, it was just for that—to 

255 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

keep them guessing—sort of a protection in a 
way.” 

“My word, Emmet, but you’re a loyal friend.” 

“Well, I’d rather die believing that I hadn’t been 
entirely a dupe and with still a lingering faith in 
friendship of my fellow man.” 

“I’m not so sure we’re going to die,” said Olivant. 
“Such absolute cold-bloodedness doesn’t seem quite 
human.” 

Shane shook his head. “Safety first is the motto 
of devils like these. They like to kill. They con¬ 
sider it an act of weakness to show a grain of mercy 
and let an enemy get by. However, we’ve only got 
to wait and see. If it does come it will come quick. 
Something chucked through that transom—then 
good night—or good morning, Judge Peter, as the 
case may be.” 

“It’s a rum finish,” said Olivant, “but it’s in good 
company, old chap, and that’s worth a lot.” 

Shane was conscious of a swelling in his throat, 
not self-pity, but an admiration for this nonchalant 
companion. “You’ve said it, Olivant. I’ve met 
some nervy men in my time, but never one that I’d he 
prouder to break the fresh trail with than with you.” 

This emotional crisis, strongly restrained, left 
them silent for a moment. Then Olivant, whose 
good cheer was of the immortal, imperishable sort 
that defies anything so insignificant as pressing death, 
remarked, almost blithely: “I say, Shane, I can’t 
help banking a little on what I told them about your 
being Jedburgh’s prospective son-in-law. Because 
you’re headed that way, you know, whether you’ve 
fully discovered it or not.” 

“Well,” said Shane, reflectively, “the curious fact 

256 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

about it is that almost as you were saying it, I did 
discover it. That’s what makes me so loath to quit.” 

“That girl’s pure gold,” said Olivant. “Some¬ 
times I’ve thought that she strikes the balance of 
everything that’s raw in her dad. And she’s in love 
with you until it hurts. Will you do me a favor— 
grant me a last request in case we don’t come 
through?” 

“Anything you like old man.” 

“Then write Sharon a brief line to say that if die 
you must you do so loving her. That it’s worth it 
to have saved her from these swine.” 

“All right,” said Shane. “It would be a final beau 
geste, even if it weren’t the truth and I’ve just re¬ 
cently discovered that it would be about the truest 
letter to a girl I ever wrote.” 

“We’re getting on,” said Olivant. “Oh Death, 
where is thy sting?” 

“There’s no sting in the sort he promised us, old 
boy,” Shane said. “A perfect euthanasia.” 

Another little silence fell in contemplation of this 
thought. It was interrupted by the sounds of people 
moving quietly past the door, then the slight rustling 
of furniture and the low murmur of voices in the 
next room, this so audible that Shane remarked 
upon it. 

“Must be a mighty thin partition or perhaps a 
listening post of sorts. If they discuss our fate in 
ordinary tones we sha’n’t have to be told.” 

“They should worry about what we overhear,” 
said Olivant, “because we’ve got about as much 
chance for an appeal as the poor devil strapped on 
the chair waiting to short circuit the lighting system.” 

It was apparent that a number of people were in 

257 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

conclave. The sounds from the adjoining room in¬ 
dicated chairs drawn up to a table, as if for a direc¬ 
tors’ meeting or the deliberations of a jury, which 
was actually what it amounted to. Also a certain 
decorousness obtained in the discussion, as if a pre¬ 
siding officer were addressing and responding in turn 
to different members of the meeting. The voices 
slowly rose in pitch and volume, but this availed the 
listeners nothing, for the language spoken was a 
foreign one that neither understood. Russian or 
Polish or Spanish, muffled by the intervening dia¬ 
phragm of thin wall in a way to make even its 
nationality unintelligible. 

Shane and Olivant sat waiting apathetically. From 
time to time they caught a glimpse of the eyes and 
forehead of their guard outside the door peering 
over the transom in a cursory way, as though per¬ 
forming reluctantly an unnecessary duty. They 
could, in fact, anticipate the inspection from the rustle 
made as he mounted on a chair. 

Then as the discussion in the room adjoining be¬ 
came more general and disputative, as though there 
were a growing lack of accord, it seemed to Shane 
that this transom surveillance was growing more in¬ 
frequent, longer spaced in intervals. The man might 
be sitting for longer lapses or slipping off to listen 
to the progress of the debate. Shane began to won¬ 
der how many lunges against that door would burst 
it through, but it was a heavy old-fashioned one and 
opened inward. Shane knew that it was easy to 
burst in a door from without, but not outward from 
vrithin, because of the supporting jambs. 

He abandoned any such hopeless endeavor. He 
was also beginning to abandon any other sort of 

258 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

hope, because it seemed to him that the argument 
was moving in their disfavor. Shane reasoned that 
if favorable it would not have lasted so long. There 
seemed to be a kind of protest against some sort of 
folly, and a premonition told him that this folly 
would be considered that of risking their release. 

The head appeared again above the transom. 
Shane, watching it abstractedly, could see only its 
upper half, a segment of the nose, the eyes, and fore¬ 
head. It had for him a curious fascination, per¬ 
haps because the eyes were luminous against a very 
pallid skin. This and a sort of masklike absence of 
expression held his gaze. He began to concentrate 
upon those eyes, to see how long he might be able 
to fix and hold their almost hypnotic stare, and while 
doing this it seemed presently to him as though he 
were slowly acquiring a mastery. They appeared to 
darken, and the skin against which they were set to 
whiten. It flashed then across Shane’s mind that a 
number of people, particularly women, had at differ¬ 
ent times remarked the forcefulness of his regard. 

He thought suddenly of Cynthia and how she had 
been overwhelmed with a sort of horror and con¬ 
fusion on meeting his stare for that brief moment 
in which his mind was focused in retrospect of his 
strangling match with the watcher down there by 
the creek and he had seemed to feel again the con¬ 
tortions of the man’s body against his. Shane had 
never experimented in hypnotism and had a mild aver¬ 
sion for such practice as one partly hysterical, partly 
unclean. 

It occurred then to him that not many days before 
he had been drawn into a staring match with Jed¬ 
burgh, when that overwhelming personality had 

259 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


transferred his fixity of gaze from the polished top 
of the humidor to the focal point of Shane’s retinas, 
as though driving in a spike. And in that brief en¬ 
counter the visual outpourings of Shane’s will had 
smote against that of Jedburgh and blunted and 
crumpled and flung it back at him with the insulting 
violence of a stream of spittle. 

Shane had not thought much of it at the time, 
because he was too incensed and the encounter had 
on his part been impromptu. But he thought of it 
now and remembered that the dominant Jedburgh 
had seemed to him to shift his gaze with a decided 
effort. 

All this while, two or three seconds, perhaps, 
Shane seemed to feel within himself a swiftly grow¬ 
ing mastery. He became instinctly conscious of a 
tremendous force within himself. His will poured 
out with a sort of gripping tenacity to hold the gaze 
of that section of a mask that was peering through 
the transom. 

Beside him, Olivant was leaning back in a semi¬ 
drowse, the result perhaps of the diminished oxygen 
in the small, unventilated room. The noise of the 
voices on the other side of the partition had mounted 
to a wrangling crescendo. 

For the first time in his life, Shane put out a 
violent and conscious effort at the projection of moral 
force in a purely occult way. 

Then something went wrong. Shane discovered, 
to his dismay, that the eyes glaring at him through 
the slit in the transom were becoming glazed. They 
rolled upward to expose the white eyeballs. Also 
the head in which they were set was tilting slowly 
backward. Four clutching fingers hooked themselves 

260 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

over the transom's edge as if for support. They 
began to slip a little. 

Was the man fainting? Losing consciousness 
from the crushing weight of Shane’s projected will? 
Whatever the cause, the effect threatened disaster to 
any effort of Shane’s. The man was about to fall. 
Shane waited for the crash. 

But there was no crash. Merely a faint rustling 
and what sounded like an expiring sigh. The chalky 
visage set with its white eyeballs disappeared. The 
gripping fingers slipped off the transom’s edge. 
Shane found himself staring at the empty space as 
one might stare at the swimming void left in the 
fading of an apparition. Shane, bewildered, was 
still staring in this blind fashion when he heard a 
door creak sharply on its hinges. 

The diapason of babble that had been rising and 
falling in the room adjoining trailed off in a synco¬ 
pated diminuendo. It checked, stopped, and in the 
breathless silence that followed Shane heard smoth¬ 
ered, gasping pronunciation of the name that had 
passed through his brain so many times and with such 
varying claims on his belief and disbelief. 

“Clamart . . . Clamart . . . Clamart. . . !” 

Shane’s heart checked in the midair . . . like a 
shot pigeon. There was another mortal second of 
silence. Then, as if some feline beast, one of the 
great carnivora, were starting its rattling, snarling 
growl, Shane heard, in fierce tones of such inflection 
as he had never heard before in Clamart’s throaty 
voice: 

“Where are they? Are they still alive? Speak 
up, you spawn of hell!” 

Olivant roused with a start. Shane gripped his 

261 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


knee with a warning, “SWh'h!” It was not a mo¬ 
ment to create the least diversion. How Clamart 
could hope to hold fast such a roomful or impress 
his mastery upon it was unimaginable, but there must 
at least be nothing to distract his attention. The 
suddenness of his appearance, the dread of his per¬ 
sonality, and perhaps even more the ferocious con¬ 
tempt of his bearing as he flung in upon them unsup¬ 
ported had produced a sort of stasis of thought and 
speech and action. Or so it seemed to Shane as no 
man of them spoke. 

“Where are they?” Clamart next demanded. 
“Speak out, some of you stinking snakes.” And 
then, as the silence still continued, his voice broke 
louder, with a husky, almost coughing aspiration: 
“Hand me that list, hellion. Sit still . . . the whole 
rotten scum of you.” 

Another silence of breathless tension. Shane, ex¬ 
pectant of a sudden uproar when the spell broke, as 
any moment promised that it must, heard from 
Clamart a sort of furious, strangled imprecation that 
was part a sob. Then: “Ruled off, by the Lord! 
That does it. Here you go to hell. . . 

There came at this a curious bleating, as if from 
sheep driven into an abattoir. “Ach . . . Gott 
. . . no!” cried a thin, reedy voice. And another 
panted: “Wait . . . Clamart . . . they are still 
alive. . . . No . . . no!” A wailing chorus quav¬ 
ered: “Wait . . . wait . . . they are alive. No 
. . . no!” But it seemed to Shane that this ago¬ 
nized babel that was yet not loud confined itself to 
smothered protests, stifled implorings, and the sort 
of breathless supplications that might come from 
grovelers, their heads in the dust, almost inviting 

262 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


the lethal stroke and already moribund from dread 
expectation of it. Victims of the arena might have 
uttered such lifeless, inarticulate cries as the lions 
crouched and crawled to take them. 

“That’s the breed you spawn from,” Clamart 
growled. “Liars and belly crawlers to your last 
poisonous breath. Suck it in, you hell brew.” 

There came a rustle, a sharp tinkle of breaking 
glass, and the sliding of quick feet. A door slammed. 
There was a tremulous wail or two followed by the 
confused bumping of bodies. Then silence again. 


263 


CHAPTER XX 


S OMEBODY was breathing heavily just outside 
the room where Shane and Olivant were sitting 
petrified with wonder. Shane found his voice and 
called softly: 

“Frank!” 

“Shane!” The door was shaken violently, then 
unlocked and opened. Clamart stood staring daz¬ 
edly at the pair. At his feet lay the body of a man, 
the guard. 

“I thought they’d done for you,” Clamart panted. 
“Come quick before it gets us.” 

They hurried down the stairs. At the foot Oli¬ 
vant paused, clinging to the newel post. “I feel 
damned groggy,” he gasped. 

Clamart took him under the arm. “This way, 
hurry,” he said, and led them to the rear of the 
house. He opened two windows, then sat Olivant 
in a chair by one of them. Shane himself was con¬ 
scious of no discomfort. Clamart, after a few 
deep breaths, seemed at his ease again. 

“What happened up there, Frank?” Shane asked, 
though partly guessing. 

“The last act. The grande finale. Scarcely that, 
though. Call it the scraping of the dirty dishes. 
Lord! but I’m happy, boy. I thought I’d got around 
to it too late. I was watching that skunk outside 
your door, from the head of the stairs. When he 
wilted I thought he must have got a whiff from in¬ 
side your room. But it was what he was about to 

264 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

give you, not what he had already given you. I 
took it from his hand as he keeled over. He had 
loosened the cork a little.” 

“Gosh! And you took it?” 

“I jammed it down again. Even then, it nearly 
got me. I was fighting for breath in there. Then 
I looked on their list and saw your names ruled off. 
That settled it. I fed it to ’em. Smashed the flask 
along the table they were sitting round. Swift action. 
It got them all at once.” 

“They’re right about you, Frank,” Shane said. 
“Thought perhaps they’d all died of fright.” He 
looked at Olivant. “How’s she sparking, buddy?” 

“Better now.” Olivant sat up. “Makes me sick 
to go through smiling until the big rescue scene, then 
flop from funk.” 

“No blooming fear,” Shane said. “We know all 
about that. Who tipped you off that we were here, 
Frank?” 

“Leontine. We’ve been keeping our eye on this 
joint. She saw you come in just before dark.” 

Shane struck his thigh. “That girl in a blond wig, 
across the street. I might have guessed.” 

Clamart shook his head. “You might have re¬ 
membered, Shane. She mentioned this place in your 
hearing at my house. Said she saw Humboldt come 
out of it.” 

Shane nodded gloomily. “That’s right. I won¬ 
dered where I’d heard the name. I now recall your 
saying that it was pretty raw for a great chemist like 
Humboldt to get down to peddling dope. I need a 
nurse in constant attention. That or an undertaker.” 

“Not the latter, now.” Clamart drew another 
long breath. “This crowd is cooked.” 

265 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Olivant rose to his feet and stood a little un¬ 
steadily. “Well, that’s some dish for old William H. 
Satan. Shall we go?” 

“Just a moment,” Clamart said. “I want to take 
a look around up there.” 

Shane shook his head. “Too devilish risky, 
Frank.” 

“I don’t think so. This stuff acts instantaneously 
and then loses its good like an explosion. You know 
Leontine went into Coding’s place right after they 
got him, and sat there three quarters of an hour. I 
did the same. Went into my study not long after it 
was dropped down the chimney. It’s a highly vola¬ 
tile toxic ether acting on the heart centers, and the 
chances are that the contact with the air renders it al¬ 
most immediately inert. They say a drop of pure prus¬ 
sic acid on a dog’s tongue will kill him before he gets 
his mouth shut, and a whiff of this stuff seems to have 
about the same effect. The Medicis had subtle poi¬ 
sons like that. You chaps wait here. I’ll be careful.” 

Shane caught him by the sleeve. “Don’t chance it, 
Frank. It’s not worth it.” 

“I really ought to, Shane.” 

“Then I’ll go with you.” 

“So will I,” said Olivant—“but go slow about it.” 

“You bet. I want to get the list and air the 
room.” He led the way up the stairs, then paused 
outside the closed door of the fatal room. Sniffing 
tentatively around its crevices, Clamart opened it a 
crack. “All right,” he said, and entered. Shane fol¬ 
lowed, scarcely breathing. On the threshold he 
fetched up aghast. 

“This will do me, thanks,” he said. “Get your 
list and come along.” 


266 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

“All right,” Clamart answered. “I only wanted 
to make sure. It’s made. We’ll leave the door 
open. No danger now,” and he followed Shane 
out and down the stairs. “Let’s slip out now un¬ 
ostentatiously. If we’re suspected of being mixed up 
in this party we’d spend the rest of our lives explain¬ 
ing things and trying to prove the virtue of our 
actions and intentions.” 

“Yes, in jail,” Shane agreed. 

“No blooming fear, with Papa Jedburgh in the 
party. The gullet of any jail would choke on him.” 

“What price slime like that?” asked Clamart, with 
contempt. “They are criminals on such a lot of 
counts and not one of them with the saving grace of 
manhood. They sneak into the country through 
Cuba. Their European record is anarchy and assas¬ 
sination, poison mostly, or bombs. They prey on a 
clean nation through pandering to vices of their own 
dissemination. They blackmail, murder, abduct, or 
poison, and all by stealth. And when you get them 
cornered, there’s not a man of them dares lift his 
eyes to look death in the face. Faugh!” He spat 
on the rug. 

“What you’ve just done,” said Shane, “is rather 
like sticking a formalin candle into a room infected 
with lepra or tetanus or cholera bacilli.” 

“That’s it,” said Olivant. “They even had the 
look of magnified microbes. What if we go ?” 

“Come on,” said Clamart, and they went out. 
“I’ll leave the front door open. That will attract 
the notice of the patrolman when he passes. No 
use in impesting the place any more than necessary.” 

The night was dark, with a cold drizzle. They 
walked unnoticed to the next big thoroughfare. None 

267 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

of them had spoken since leaving the house. Paus¬ 
ing now on a corner to look around for a taxi, Clam- 
art asked: “Is Mr. Jedburgh apt to be at home, 
Olivant?” 

“Why, yes! At home, and cursing me for my 
A.W.O.L. He wanted me to help draft up a big 
advertising drive.” 

“Then he shall not want in vain,” Clamart said, 
dryly. “It’s only about nine o’clock, and he’ll still 
be digesting. Mr. Jedburgh will have not only your 
valued service, but Shane’s and mine also. Does he 
ever play chess ?” 

“Why—yes-” 

“Well, then,” said Clamart. “It is his move. 
Let’s go up and see how good a sport he is,” and he 
signaled a questing taxi. 


268 



CHAPTER XXI 


T HE great Jedburgh had achieved his habitual 
Gargantuan repast and was in his study, im¬ 
patiently awaiting Olivant, when this valued confi¬ 
dential secretary entered. Jedburgh glanced at his 
face and frowned. 

“You look like you had been on the loose,” he 
growled. 

“On the contrary, Mr. Jedburgh,” Olivant an¬ 
swered. “I have never been in a position that seemed 
to offer so little hope of ever being on the loose 
again.” 

“Hah!” Jedburgh’s frown deepened. He dis¬ 
liked cryptic or ambiguous speech when addressed 
directly to himself, though it amused him to hear 
Olivant vex and bewilder other people with it—those 
coming to him with propositions that they displayed 
in gilded frames. 

“Shane Emmet and I walked into a deadfall late 
this afternoon, Mr. Jedburgh. The price of our 
lives was two hundred thousand dollars to be paid 
a messenger by you or Clamart or both. It wouldn’t 
have been much of a business proposition, though, 
because they meant to kill us, anyway. We knew 
it all the time.” 

Jedburgh stared at him stonily. The big cigar be¬ 
gan to roll its way to the opposite hemisphere of 
his face. 

“Another of this feller Clamart’s games,” he 
growled. 


269 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


Olivant’s pale-blue eyes appeared to freeze, as 
pale-blue water sometimes does, in a quick and bitter 
frost. Jedburgh had never seen that hard and icy 
sheen upon their surface. “Then if it was a game 
of his, Mr. Jedburgh, he played it to a brilliant 
finish. Clamart came to that place alone and said 
a few brief valedictory words to these five people 
and killed them dead as thoroughly poisoned rats. 
He said something about a game of chess. I don’t 
quite get his drift, but then I’m still muddled in my 
thoughts and fancies.” 

“You’re drunk or balmy,” muttered Jedburgh. 

Olivant sank wearily into his secretarial chair. 
“Then suppose you call them in, Mr. Jedburgh, and 
see if they are drunk and balmy, too.” 

Jedburgh touched a button. A moment later Shane 
and Clamart entered. They acknowledged in kind 
Jedburgh’s brief and noncommittal nod. 

“What you fellers bin doin’ to Olivant ? n he 
asked. 

Shane answered, curtly: “Running him into a death 
trap and out of it again. I did the first and Mr. 
Clamart did the second.” 

“Let’s have the brief of it,” said Jedburgh. “Sit 
down.” 

They seated themselves, Shane in the state of vi¬ 
brant animosity with which this man inspired him, 
and Clamart, calm, unruffled, indifferent so far as 
one could see, but with a sort of lurking amusement 
in his gray, thoughtful eyes. Shane, as though grudg¬ 
ing the trouble he took to tell the story, described the 
sequence of events from the begining in his studio to 
the end where they had made their brief survey of 
Clamart’s finished work. There was in Shane’s style 

270 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

of narration a sort of impatient, intolerant curtness, 
as though he were saying to himself, “Why am I 
bothering to make a report to this unblinking image 
that hasn’t, and never will have, the sense to believe 
in an individual except the one that he stares at when 
he shaves.” 

At his sulky conclusion, Jedburgh, who had 
listened entirely unmoved, rotated his big head in 
the direction of Clamart. 

“Looks like you saved us our two bright young 
fellers and a bunch of money, Clamart.” 

“I may have saved you more than that, Jedburgh,” 
Clamart answered, pleasantly. He took a list from 
his pocket and pushed it across the table to him. 
“Here is a list of thirteen names of people evidently 
intended for the scrap heap. The first is that of 
Colling, my associate. It’s ruled off. They got 
him. A little farther down you come to mine, also 
ruled off, then written in again. They were a little 
hasty about that. Then, next to the last is your 
own. That would seem to indicate that they still 
had some hope of doing business with you until quite 
recently. That fourth name ruled off, I don’t know. 
One of their own mob very likely.” 

“Emmet and Olivant are ruled off,” Jedburgh 
muttered. 

“Yes,” said Clamart. “When I saw that I did 
some ruling off myself. I took it for granted that 
I’d got there too late—except for reprisals. I had 
reason to believe already that they had just done 
for these two boys, because when I got to the head 
of the stairs I saw a man standing on a chair in the 
act of slowly collapsing and hanging to the edge 
of the transom by one hand. It seemed plain enough 

271 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


that he’d done his job to those inside the room and 
got a dose of his own medicine before he could get 
clear. I caught him as he fell and eased him down, 
and took the flask out of his hand.” 

“What is this here stuff?” Jedburgh asked. 

“I’m not chemist enough to tell you. Something 
like what the Borgias and Medicis used to put on a 
rose that some sweetheart they’d tired of was apt to 
smell.” 

“Do you think you got ’em all?” Jedburgh asked. 

“I hope so. But I think you got the worst of 
them, the leaders. And that was my game, too.” 

Jedburgh gave him a piercing look, for his big 
bulging eyes could be intent enough. “What do you 
mean, your game. What sort of a game?” 

“Call it chess,” said Clamart. “You were the 
opposing king. I was playing to checkmate you, not 
to destroy you. You don’t jump the king in chess. 
When he’s checkmated the game stops and the other 
fellow wins. Then the beaten party pays his 
ransom.” 

“Don’t get you,” said Jedburgh. “Let’s have it in 
straight talk.” 

“Well, then, Mr. Jedburgh, I’ve been playing a 
big game for a definite stake. That was to smash the 
narcotic traffic in this country. I believed that it 
might find a powerful backer in you. That’s where 
I began really to play. My king was a clean country. 
I took on Emmet as my king’s knight. Leontine was 
the queen. Then there were bishops and castles and 
pawns and things. My first moves were less at you 
than around you. I had nothing at all to do with 
the abduction of your daughter, but I sent you down 
there after her, hoping that one of two things would 

272 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

happen—that either you would commit yourself in 
some way so as to get into a pocket where I could 
nail you, or, in your rage at being coerced, you 
would sweep a lot of my adversaries off the board 
and stop the game. You did—you did both. But I 
wanted more than merely to stop your backing of 
these others, I wanted your support for that country¬ 
wide movement of mine that I told Olivant about. 
And I think I’ve got it.” 

“Why?” Jedburgh demanded. His cigar rolled 
back again. 

“From an estimate of your own true character/* 
Clamart leaned forward, dropped his elbows on the 
desk, and his eyes fastened those of Jedburgh. “You 
hate to find yourself under obligation to any man. 
But you are now under a deep obligation to me and 
an even greater one to Shane Emmet, who is allied 
with me. Emmet saved your daughter from God 
knows what. He may have saved your life in that 
fight at the balloon shed, and he may have saved you 
no end of trouble in burning up the place with the 
bodies of the men you shot.” 

“I was wrong about Emmet,” Jedburgh growled, 
“and I don’t mind saying so. I guess I’ve been wrong 
about you, too.” 

“I guess you have,” Clamart retorted. “To-night 
I have saved the life of Olivant, who, if loyal serv¬ 
ice and devotion count for anything, ought to be 
pretty close to you. And I think I may claim to 
having eliminated the future possibility of your name 
being ruled off a list like this. There’s nobody left 
to rule it off, unless I’m very much mistaken.” 

Jedburgh leaned back in his chair, clasped his thick 
hands behind his head, and stared thoughtfully at 

273 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

Clamart. “So now you’ve come to collect your pay,” 
he said. 

“Call it a bet, Jedburgh. The wager of the game. 
I never did believe that you’d believe in me, but I 
hoped I might persuade you that what I offer is worth 
it to you in advertising—popular publicity. I’ve 
been playing not so much against you as for you 
against this horrible outfit. I’ve been making moves 
and shifting players and risking the loss of the best, 
with you the prize. In many ways you are a king, 
Jedburgh, and I think you’re princely enough , to 
square an obligation.” 

For several seconds Jedburgh remained immobile 
as the lower section of the totem pole that he so much 
resembled. Then a curious phenomenon began 
slowly to manifest itself in the stolid bulk of the big 
man. 

Shane, watching him intently, could not imme¬ 
diately determine what was happening. Jedburgh, 
eying Clamart with a sort of enveloping compre¬ 
hension, shifted his eyes to Shane. 

“What do you want, young feller?” he rumbled. 

“A whole lot,” Shane answered; “more than Clam¬ 
art. I want Sharon.” 

Jedburgh’s eyes began to twinkle. Shane would 
never have believed it possible that they could 
twinkle. Jedburgh shifted them again to Olivant. 

“What’s yours, Olivant?” 

“It’s about time you asked, Mr. Jedburgh,” Oli¬ 
vant answered, in a dry, crackling voice. “By Gad! 
I want a drink!” 

A convulsive movement shook Jedburgh. He gog¬ 
gled at his secretary and was seized by a sort of erup¬ 
tive strangling in his throat. Then suddenly and 

274 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 

without the slightest warning hoarse bellowings broke 
out of him, and Shane understood. 

Jedburgh was laughing. 

Even Olivant, the habitually unperturbed, looked 
alarmed. He touched a bell and ordered whisky, 
but Jedburg’s unwonted ebullition stopped as sud¬ 
denly as it had begun. He leaned across his desk 
and stretched out a thick, mottled hand. 

“Shake, Clamart, I had you wrong. I’m a prac¬ 
tical sort of feller, and it’s hard for me to swaller 
anything outside my line. But you’re all right. 
Go as far as you like. Carry on your Christian cru¬ 
sade, now that there’s been a good house cleanin’.” 

Shane, watching Clamart, saw what he had never 
expected to see on that handsome, virile, masterful 
face that could be so terrific at times. A wonderful 
softening was set upon it, as an artist might lay in 
the delicate human contours after having mapped out 
the vigorous planes and angles of his portrait. 

“Well, that’s fixed,” Jedburgh said, and looked 
at Shane. 

“Do you think my girl will have you, young 
feller?” 

“I don’t know, sir,” Shane answered, in a sudden 
dawning of respect. “I haven’t asked her.” 

“Well, then,” Jedburgh said. “Go upstairs in 
the pink-silk sittin’ room and ask her.” And wheel¬ 
ing suddenly on Olivant, he said. “And there’s your 
drink. Clamart had me right. I always try to pay 
my shot.” 

An hour later Shane went back to his apartment. 
He was desperately tired, but with that not unpleas¬ 
ant fatigue that comes when the strain is over, the 
work well finished, and one yields to the demands of 

275 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


brain and body with the consciousness of a merited 
repose. 

Undressing slowly, he paused several times to 
stare thoughtfully at the photograph of Cynthia that 
so long had occupied its place upon his desk, rather 
like an ikon in its big silver frame. 

He now appeared to weigh the justice of its claim 
to be there, in that position of undisputed sover¬ 
eignty. Shane picked it up, looked at it curiously for 
a moment, and with deliberation took it from its 
shrine. Then, stepping back, his eyes rested on the 
void that it had left. This emptiness was singularly 
lacking in any poignant sense of loss. In fact, it 
seemed already to possess a tenant, a young and very 
lovely tenant of whom the personality might fill not 
the lacking complementary part that hitherto he had 
felt himself to need, but a supplementary one. 

He began to understand a little better why, since 
meeting Sharon, he had felt the inadequacy of Cyn¬ 
thia to fill more than a few of his empty places. It 
was because Cynthia did not wish to fill these gaps 
with anything of her very own. She would have 
liked to smooth them over by the introduction of 
foreign matter followed by a glaze—like makeshift 
carpentry where a wedge is driven to remedy the 
poor juxtaposition of a mortise. Their two natures 
did not interlock. There must always be points of 
missing contact. But something told Shane that 
with Sharon there would be none of these. There 
was a richness about her that seemed to promise a 
pouring in of her to fill the heart and soul and body 
of the man of her choice like a molten precious 
metal into a mold. He had made that discovery first 
when carrying her across the field in his arms, then 

276 


THE RETURN OF FRANK CLAMART 


in their perfect sympathy while speeding homeward 
in the car. 

Some women, he reflected, made captives of their 
husbands and held them in chains. Others colonized 
them, very often wisely and well. But still others 
effected a union that resulted in a new and stronger 
race. He knew that Sharon would be like that. 

So he stared at the empty oval of the frame, and 
that distinctive faculty of visualization that he pos¬ 
sessed began to create an image there. Sharon, sum¬ 
moned from the void, looked out at him where for¬ 
merly he had looked at Cynthia. Shane smiled a 
little to himself. 

Then, musingly, he stepped across the room to the 
line of bookshelves and there he made of Cynthia’s 
photograph the most final disposition that one can 
possibly find for such. 

He placed it with the other pretty portraits that 
were there. 


THE END 


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